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09 Apr, 2023 by Abraham
Bernard, or "Mitch", appeared with me for a "validation" petitions hearing on an April 27 virtual court conference, committing that he would represent me in a physical appearance trial the next day on the 28th. The next day as we started the trial, Bernard asked for the case to be postponed because he had not presented to the court “a bill of particulars” and the judge chastised him for not being ready to proceed but meanwhile the opposing side interjected and called for a dismissal based on the fact that Mitch had not submitted a “notice of appearance” and an “affidavit of service” to the filing system as a prerequisite to the whole case being heard. As a result of the lack of paperwork from Mitch, my case was dismissed without prejudice. So we refiled the case the very next day on the 29th. Mitch then did file the notice of appearance and affidavit of service and submitted a bill of particulars timely. Surprisingly the next judge to hear the case dismissed it, erroneously, on the theory that a counter claim of “invalidation” of my petitions from my opposition was granted to them by the previous judge thereby creating a res judicata application. However this 2nd judge was corrected by an appellate judge panel to whom we later appealed, to say that our case was dismissed only procedurally. The appellate judges however went on to say that our bill of particulars (the evidence to be submitted on the filing system) was not specific enough or particularized properly and went on to uphold the dismissal of our case on that basis. On a zoom meeting that I hosted for a community group, Mitch surprisingly admitted that his preparation for the bill of particulars on my validation case was lacking because he had “only one day to prepare it”. My aggravation about this step of the process, is that on the day that we spent preparing the case, even though we were together in his office for multiple hours, most of the time spent and much of what he was actually doing, was taking calls from other clients who would keep him on the phone as they griped about their situation albeit without stated urgency and he just listened without even needing to take any concrete actions on what they were saying. This disorganization ensued despite Mitch having 2 assistants in the office who should have been triaging the calls focusing only on those that had urgency so that he could give proper attention to preparing my case appropriately. When the appellate judge panel came back with a ruling that our evidence presentation on the rebuttal form was not sufficiently particularized and therefore dismissed (which I felt was a draconian measure), Mitch did not ask whether the dismissal was with prejudice. If it was without prejudice then Mitch should have given me the option to refile the case. I was not knowledgable enough to ask this question at the time but many months later when it did occur to me to ask Mitch the question of whether the case could have been refiled, Mitch wrote back to me “It is over. Election is done almost a year ago.” Since he would not answer my question I presume that he either doesn’t know the answer or knows that the answer is that we indeed had the option of refiling the case. To conclude: Even though I feel the court did not deal fairly with me, it is evident that Bernard Mitch Alter did not perform satisfactorily 3 times: 1) Not to submit the paperwork for the first day of trial 2) Not to properly describe the evidence that we were going to submit with specificity or particularity and 3) Not to find out if we had the option or apprise me if there was an option to refile the case when the appellate judges dismissed our case again for insufficient paperwork. For these reasons I feel
majorly disappointed with his representation.
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