Two can play that game: Leah Remini presses for another judge change

[Leah Remini and defendant David Miscavige]

We’re still stunned by what happened yesterday in Los Angeles, where Scientology leader David Miscavige sent his personal attorney Jeffrey Riffer down to Superior Court before a scheduled hearing in Jane Doe’s forced-marriage lawsuit.

Riffer informed Judge Robert Broadbelt that he was being removed before the judge could make final a ruling he was planning that would have declared Scientology arbitration “unconscionable.” A new judge will now have to start over from scratch and deal with Scientology’s motion to derail Jane Doe’s lawsuit into arbitration, and we have no idea if they will come to the same conclusion that Judge Broadbelt did.

His amazing tentative ruling — that Jane Doe’s case was protected under the new law against forced arbitration in cases of sexual assault, and the unconscionable nature of Scientology’s particular brand of arbitration — is as if it never existed. Poof.

We are still hearing from people who are confused as to how Miscavige can keep doing this — he also removed the judge in Leah Remini’s lawsuit, and also months after the case had begun.

We explained in a video last night how Miscavige had pulled it off. Normally, you can file a peremptory challenge and remove a judge only at the beginning of a lawsuit. This is in part a consideration for the judge, who isn’t going to want to spend a lot of time reading filings and preparing rulings if he or she is just going to be sent packing.

But for Miscavige, who had spent months evading service like a slippery eel, he had waited until these two judges had invested all that time and had come up with rulings Scientology didn’t like, and then Miscavige made his first appearance in the case. To him, you see, it was still only the very beginning of the lawsuit, and so he had the right to remove these judges.

It certainly wasn’t fair to Leah Remini in her lawsuit, or Jane Doe in hers, but as we have said again and again, US courts are simply not set up to deal with an organization that deals in nothing but bad faith like Scientology.

As the attorney and well-known protester Darth Xander described it to us, using Miscavige’s initial appearances strategically to remove the judges was just “good lawyering for bad people.”

Amazing.

Well, Leah Remini isn’t sitting still for it. We also learned yesterday that Leah his filed another new motion in her lawsuit, because she still wants a judge change as well, and one that probably makes too much good sense to come true.

After Miscavige managed to get Judge Randolph Hammock removed in Leah’s case, Judge Holly Fujie was assigned to it, and she scheduled a hearing for May 29.

But Leah isn’t giving up on the idea that because her case and the Bixler lawsuit, filed by Danny Masterson’s victims, are so similar, they should both be handled by Judge Upinder Kalra, who is already handling the Bixler case, and who recently issued a devastating ruling denying Scientology’s attempt to gut that lawsuit.

Here’s the reasoning that Leah’s team has submitted to the court. They’re asking for a July 11 hearing to consider this change…

Both Ms. Remini and the Bixler plaintiffs allege that Defendants engage in a “Fair Game” policy of harassment, attacks, embarrassment, humiliation, and attempted destruction of Defendants’ “enemies.”

Both the Bixler and the Remini complaints allege that:

— Defendants declare anyone who publicly leaves or criticizes Scientology to be a Suppressive Person and directs agents to subject them to Fair Game tactics.
— A department of the Church of Scientology International known as the Office of Special Affairs (“OSA”) carries out Defendants’ Fair Game campaigns, directed by Defendant David Miscavige.
— Defendants’ Fair Game policies state that a Suppressive Person may “be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued, lied to or destroyed.”
— Defendants’ Fair Game tactics include hiring private investigators to surveil, follow, intimidate, video record, and photograph Suppressive Persons.

— The goal of Defendants’ Fair Game tactics is to “ruin utterly” those they deem Suppressive Persons.
— Defendants declared each of the Plaintiffs (in both Bixler and Remini) Suppressive Persons after the Plaintiffs spoke publicly about the abuses of Scientology, and Defendants instituted Fair Game campaigns against each of the Plaintiffs to silence their public criticism of Scientology.
— Defendants employed Fair Game tactics against Plaintiffs (both in Bixler and Remini), including sending their agents to Plaintiffs’ homes to film, harass, and surveil them, perpetrating credit card fraud against them, perpetrating social media harassment campaigns against them, publicly calling Plaintiffs religious bigots and liars, and interfering with their businesses and professional livelihoods.

As the similarities between the two complaints illustrate, Defendants’ Fair Game tactics constitute a pattern and practice, applied consistently to silence and isolate its enemies and deter others who might associate with them, including the Bixler and Remini plaintiffs. Thus, discovery into Fair Game — including the Scientology doctrine surrounding it, the mechanisms by which it is carried out, and the people involved — will be necessary in both actions. Moreover, as Plaintiffs in both actions have named Scientology leader David Miscavige as a defendant and have alleged that he directs Defendants’ Fair Game campaigns, Plaintiffs in each case will present evidence of Miscavige’s control and decision-making over Fair
Game campaigns, requiring common depositions and discovery related to his role. This overlap of facts, witnesses, and discovery between the actions necessitates that the cases be related.

For these reasons, if the Remini and Bixler actions were to be heard by different judges, they would risk inconsistent rulings and would necessitate “substantial duplication of judicial resources.” C.R.C. 3.300(a)(4). Thus, the cases should be related.

So, just to be clear. David Miscavige twice was able to remove judges months into two different lawsuits and after rulings he didn’t like, because he was able to game the system by dropping into the lawsuits after wasting everyone’s time with his evasion of process servers. In other words, the courts have rewarded him for his bad behavior.

In Leah’s case, she’s asking for a judge change based entirely on how much good sense it makes to save the court from unnecessary duplication of effort.

And that’s why we have a feeling the court will decide she’s simply asking too much. Right? Isn’t that how this works? Aren’t American courts wonderful?

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