On the morning of Wednesday, December 11th, 2024, I went to the Multnomah County Circuit Court with one of my closest friends. The hearing only lasted ten minutes. Michael Fuller said a quick blurb about how this was simply the first attempt to collect on a legal debt and how I was refusing to answer the written interrogatories into my finances and the questions on the debtor’s exam. When Judge Rima Ghandour got to me, it was immediately clear that she had zero sympathy for the unfairness of the situation I was in, and she attempted to give me no space to talk about anything other than the case for remedial sanctions for contempt of court. I pointed out how I was there in front of her with no legal support specifically because of Michael Fuller’s ethical violations. She made an order for me to get a court-appointed counsel and gave me specific directions to go to the Judicial Center a couple of blocks away to fill out the paperwork there. She scheduled a continuation of our hearing for the following Friday afternoon, December 20th.

Just before she ended the hearing, I mentioned what I had said in The Obscurantism about wanting to talk to her about getting the legal debt removed. She acknowledged reading the blog, and she flat out refused to have a conversation with me about it. I simply said, “Thank you for reading my blog,” to which she responded that she read what she was supposed to read.

I did not say aloud what I was thinking, which was, “That is more than Judge Kelly Skye did.” My friend joked with me afterward that he expected me to say it. But it did not need to be said. I am sure that all of us in the courtroom were already thinking it.

A moment before she ended the hearing, after I had only been able to say one sentence about the unfairness of the situation, a visibly frustrated Judge Ghandour said something about how the decision against me was a valid legal decision and how she has to follow the rules. Her final words of the hearing suggested that I would end up serving jail time. I did not bat an eyelash at this threat.

My friend and I went to the Judicial Center. They mentioned that they usually only gave court-appointed counsel to people in criminal cases, not civil ones, but because I had a judge’s order in hand, they let me fill out the application. They told me that if a counsel was assigned to me, I would get to meet the counsel at my next hearing on the 20th, and they also gave me a phone number to call back the next day to find out if the application would be accepted. I did not understand how this was supposed to help me if I was not going to have time to talk to the counsel before the next hearing.

The next day, December 12th, I learned that the application had been rejected, in spite of the judge’s order, on the basis that this was not a criminal case. However, I was fortunate enough to find other legal aid on that same day.

Near the end of The Smokescreen, I mentioned meeting a friend of a friend who had gone through her own legal plight, and that she was the one who first put the idea of me representing myself pro se in my head. That was on July 21st, 2023, the same day that I had the ill-fated conversation with the senior lawyer about potentially taking over my case and one week exactly before I would officially end up taking over as my own lawyer.

She and I had stayed in touch over text message in the year and a half since that time, although we had never met in person again until literally a few days before this hearing. I had kept our text conversations light and not talked about the legal fiasco I was dealing with. But when we finally saw each other for the second time, I opened up about what I was dealing with. I revealed that our first brief meeting had had a major impact in my life. I also explained that even though I had not gotten a good result in my court hearing, I thought it was very good that I had taken her advice about representing myself pro se. If I had not done so, not only would it have meant more money down the toilet to other lawyers, but I also likely would never have known about the full extent of both Marc Mohan’s and Michael Fuller’s malfeasance.

She mentioned to me a service in which I could get advisement from a legal firm at a low fixed monthly rate. I followed up on her recommendation immediately after I found out that the court-appointed counsel had fallen through. I signed up on a website, and within a short time it gave me the contact information of the law firm that had been assigned to me. I left a message on Thursday afternoon, and I got a call back from a lawyer first thing Friday morning. I had already given their receptionist my case number, so the lawyer had a little bit of bearings on my case, but he did not know how to help me that much. However, after a short discussion, he recognized that what I really needed was to talk to the bankruptcy lawyer at his firm.

Later that morning of Friday the 13th I got a call back from the bankruptcy lawyer, and it turned out to be my lucky day. He had exactly the nugget of legal knowledge that I needed. After our phone call he sent me an email with the text of the relevant law highlighted along with a link to where that law could be found online.

This new insight gave me a better way forward. I no longer needed to commit contempt of court. I wrote up the declaration of the financial status of the defendant and filed it on Wednesday, December 18th. I knew exactly what would happen after that, and it only took an hour. Michael Fuller read my declaration and emailed me and the judge’s assistant, requesting to cancel Friday’s hearing. The court obliged.

No one will be attempting to get me held in contempt anymore, and what is left of my money is safe. If you read through the declaration I linked in the last paragraph, you already know why, but I will give lazy readers the two most important sentences of that document here:

The exact way that my legal advisors helped me was to educate me about the details of ORS 18.358, which exempts retirement plans from execution for a judgment. In layman’s terms, it says that the State of Oregon does not allow collection of legal debts from retirement plans.

Because I have no income to garnish, no property to put a lien on, and almost no money left outside of my retirement accounts, there is essentially nothing that Michael Fuller or the Court is allowed to take from me.

Obviously it took getting into a terrible situation for this to work out the way it did, but it is a win. Michael Fuller failed to get me held in contempt of court, and he is never going to be able to collect his extortionate legal fees. I do not know how much the Clinchys actually paid him already, but if they were hoping to get some of that back, they are shit out of luck.

Today marks eight years exactly since this fiasco started. December 19th, 2016 was the day that I sent the first of two emails to Jennifer in advance of the 2017 New Orleans Scrabble tournament that put her and Evans on a path of hatred and vengeance against me. It also marks my first win in the entire story. I do not believe it will be my last.

Footnote

OCTENNIUM*, a rare word meaning an eight-year period, is not playable in Scrabble. However, the same letters also form EMUNCTION#, which is only acceptable in the international English lexicon, Collins Scrabble Words. Collins defines emunction as the act of nose-wiping.