An Arbitrary Rule Set by Kruse for this Trial
In a pretrial hearing, Kruse ordered that Gwen Langkilde would not appear at trial because she is a sitting judge and for her to be questioned in open court would be a bad image. Kruse required Gwen’s testimony to be given by way of deposition.
Normally, a deposition is an opportunity for parties in a civil lawsuit to obtain testimony from a witness under oath prior to trial. It’s part of the discovery process by which parties gather facts and information so they can be better prepared at trial to present their claims and defenses.
In this case, Kruse ruled that the deposition would be in lieu of testimony at trial. This meant that Newton’s attorney had no opportunity to question the witness in court. We find this a very unusual demand by a Judge.
The transcript of Gwen’s deposition became available at about 4:00 pm, the evening before the trial. Counsel for Newton brought two copies of the transcript to the hotel where Newton was staying and the two of them sat down and started a review of the transcript. This review went on until about 2:00 am the morning of the trial. But it was not possible for them to complete a review and they had to be in court in just a few hours. Counsel had to go home to try and catch a couple of hours of sleep and get ready for court. Newton continued to review the transcript until about 4:00 am but still hadn’t completed reading it when he was unable to continue. The morning of the trial, counsel picked Newton up at the hotel and they went to court.
Upon arrival at the courthouse, counsel had to take care of some other matter. That action took about an hour, which was time cut from the trial. After a quick trip to the dirty old fast food stand behind the courthouse where they were able to grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee, Newton and counsel returned to the court for the beginning of the trial.
The trial began after a moment of adjusting to accommodate Newton’s hard-of-hearing status. Kruse made a statement to Newton’s counsel which Newton showed disagreement with. Kruse saw Newton shake his head and immediately went into a tirade of verbal abuse against Newton, leaning over the bench and getting right in Newton’s face. Newton did not hear what Kruse was saying because Kruse was leaning over his microphone but Newton got the gist of it. This was a tongue-lashing that had no place in a court of civilized people. This ridiculous outburst by Justice Kruse made Newton feel like a criminal, not a citizen seeking justice.
Shortly after the trial began, counsel for Newton asked that Gwen’s deposition be read into the record in its entirety. Counsel had arranged for the court translator to play the part of Gwen while the attorneys played themselves. Each of the three participants read their parts in turn. This reading went quite well and the deposition was eventually made part of the court record. The entire deposition is posted here on this website. But there was no opportunity for Newton to face his accuser or make any in-court cross-examination.
Margaret Willis is called to testify
Margaret was asked a few questions leading up to the real reason she was there, which was to testify to the fact that she had worked with Newton for many years and never had any trouble or disagreements with him. Margaret was the only person at ASTCA who worked with Newton on a regular basis for many years. She often asked Newton questions or for help solving minor problems with the template Newton created and Margaret used for composing the directory listings in the agreed-upon format. Newton always stayed on top of the listing preparation and often asked Margaret for progress updates. This was an essential part of their working together because Newton needed to plan for production timing and make reservations with the printer. This was a solid working relationship as you will ascertain from the notes from Margaret’s deposition posted here.
Newton takes the stand
Newton sits through almost 13 hours of questions from the defense counsel. The vast majority of this time is wasted on questions about stacks of printouts defense was entering into evidence, none of which had any real bearing on anything relevant to whether ASTCA had furnished Newton with usable listings.
Defense counsel used a set of documents that Plaintiff had earlier submitted to the court in a Motion for Summary Judgment, the very same documents. Defense counsel referred to each document by the exact same designated numbers that Plaintiff had labeled each document. After all, Defense had no evidence of their own to present. This set of documents was designated as Exhibit 35. You can view these documents here. There were 117 documents in that exhibit.
While going through Exhibit 35 which had been assembled by Plaintiff, the Defense counsel “cherry-picked” the documents using only those documents that he thought would reinforce his case. For instance, much time was spent on Document 68, an email from Newton to JD Hall, in which Newton finally vented his frustration and told JD he had failed. But the defense counsel did not bring up the document Newton was responding to, document 67, an email from JD to Newton saying he was not able to meet what JD called Newton’s requirements regarding formatting saying, “The scripting to create the visually formatted data that you want is not going to happen, and upon review of the MOU, the only requirement is that we provide you with the listings in CSV format, which we have.”
This statement by JD Hall was a firm admission that 1) he was unable or unwilling to do what he was tasked to do and 2) he and therefore ASTCA, accepted the fact that the MOU was in full force and was, in fact, an enforceable contract.
Both of the above-mentioned documents, 67 and 68, can be found here.
Plaintiff’s Closing Arguments
Kruse was not interested in listening to Closing Arguments at Trial. Rather, he ordered they be submitted in writing. We were happy about this because we had a great deal of information that was not presented at the truncated trial. But, it turns out that there is very little chance our closing arguments were read by anyone because there are just too many items in the Opinion and Order that are contradictory to or show ignorance of the Closing Arguments. You can find Plaintiff’s Closing Arguments here.
Defendant’s Closing Arguments
This was a very long document containing a great deal of information that leads one to realize how little the writer actually understands about the various elements of the case. You can find the closing arguments here.
Kruse’s Opinion and Order
You can find the Opinion and Order here.
Newton’s Comments on Kruse’s Opinion and Order
You can find Newton’s comments here. This document will bring much more understanding to the case.