Shadowy facial-recognition company, tied to Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison, is aligned with political figures on the right-wing fringe

Chuck Johnson and Hoan Ton-That make the "OK" sign associated with white power

A controversial facial-recognition company has ties to right-wing politics, including Team Trump, according to a report at BuzzFeed News. Clearview AI, which has ties to Alabama via Mountain Brook-based GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison, came to national attention via an investigative report in January by Kashmir Hill, of The New York Times. Garrison, it turns out, is not the only Clearview insider to go undergound on social media since the Times article was published; other figures involved with Clearview have done the same thing.

How did the ties to right-wing politics take root? They started with company founder Hoan Ton-That, reports BuzzFeed News:

Originally known as Smartcheckr, Clearview was the result of an unlikely partnership between Ton-That, a small-time hacker turned serial app developer, and Richard Schwartz, a former adviser to then–New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Ton-That told the Times that they met at a 2016 event at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, after which they decided to build a facial recognition company.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison at gambling expo in Las Vegas

While Ton-That has erased much of his online persona from that time period, old web accounts and posts uncovered by BuzzFeed News show that the 31-year-old developer was interested in far-right politics. In a partial archive of his Twitter account from early 2017, Ton-That wondered why all big US cities were liberal, while retweeting a mix of Breitbart writers, venture capitalists, and right-wing personalities.

“In today's world, the ability to handle a public shaming / witch hunt is going to be a very important skill,” he tweeted in January 2017.

 Ton-That appears to associate with white nationalists and right-wing extremists:

Those interactions didn’t just happen online. In June 2016, Mike Cernovich, a pro-Trump personality on Twitter who propagated the Pizzagate conspiracy, posted a photo of Ton-That at a meal with far-right provocateur Chuck Johnson with both of them making the OK sign with their hands, a gesture that has since become favored by right-wing trolls.

“I was only making the Okay sign in the photo as in 'all okay,'” Ton-That said in an email. "It was completely innocuous and should not be construed as anything more than that.

"I am of Asian decent [sic] and do not hold any discriminatory views towards any group or individual," he added. "I am devoting my professional life to creating a tool to help law enforcement solve heinous crimes and protect victims. It would be absurd and unfair for anyone to distort my views and values based on old photos of any sort.”

What about Clearview's ties to Trump World? BuzzFeed provides details, including signs the company plans to offer services in "extreme opposition research" :

By the election, Ton-That was on the Trump train, attending an election night event where he was photographed with Johnson and his former business partner Pax Dickinson.

The following February, Smartcheckr LLC was registered in New York, with Ton-That telling the Times that he developed the image-scraping tools while Schwartz covered the operating costs. By August that year, they registered Clearview AI in Delaware, according to incorporation documents.

While there’s little left online about Smartcheckr, BuzzFeed News obtained and confirmed a document, first reported by the Times, in which the company claimed it could provide voter ad microtargeting and “extreme opposition research” to Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist who was running on an extremist platform to fill the Wisconsin congressional seat of the departing speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

A Smartcheckr contractor, Douglass Mackey, pitched the services to Nehlen. Mackey later became known for running the racist and highly influential Trump-boosting Twitter account Ricky Vaughn. Described by HuffPost as “Trump’s most influential white nationalist troll,” Mackey built a following of tens of thousands of users with a mix of far-right propaganda, racist tropes, and anti-Semitic cartoons. MIT’s Media Lab ranked Vaughn, who used multiple accounts to dodge several bans, as one of the top 150 influencers of the 2016 presidential election — ahead of NBC News and the Drudge Report.

“An unauthorized proposal was sent to Mr. Nehlen,” Ton-That said. “We did not seek this work. Moreover, the technology described in the proposal did not even exist.”

Those tied to Clearview seem to have a twisted relationship with any notion of privacy:

Ironically for a company that seeks to erode privacy, many key figures at Clearview have attempted to lower their public profiles. Some began to do so long before the attention from the press.

Since Ton-That and Schwartz started Clearview, their social media and internet presences have been scrubbed. Ton-That deleted his Twitter and Instagram accounts, while Schwartz's LinkedIn profile vanished and his past with Smartcheckr has been obscured across the web.

When asked about this, Ton-That said in an email, "Regarding myself and others at the company, some choose not to maintain social media accounts because they are time consuming."

A search for Schwartz’s name plus "Smartcheckr" leads to results for seemingly nonsensical webpages, which include embedded YouTube videos from an account named “Seo Sgr” — results indicative of the use of a reputation management service to affect search results. BuzzFeed News also found a now-deleted press release referencing Schwartz and Smartcheckr, which linked to a New York Times obituary for a different Richard Schwartz. The company declined to comment on the fake webpages and whether Schwartz had hired someone to game search engine results.

On Monday, a BuzzFeed News reporter called a number associated with Schwartz after locating his contact information in an email to a New Jersey police department obtained in a public records request. A man picked up, denied he was Richard Schwartz, and hung up. BuzzFeed News called back again and got a voicemail recording that stated the number belonged to Schwartz.

Clearview employee Marko Jukic, who signed off on various emails to police departments around the country, also appears to have deleted various social media accounts, while the Facebook profile of customer representative Jessica Medeiros Garrison disappeared from public view following the Times’ story.

Shadowy facial-recognition company Clearview AI, with ties to Alabama Republican operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison, reports "intruder" stole client list

Jessica Medeiros Garrison at a gambling expo in Las Vegas.

 A controversial facial-recognition company, which has Alabama connections, said yesterday an "intruder" stole its entire client list, according to a report at The Daily Beast. It's not clear how the intruder gained access, if the data was stolen digitally or in some other fashion.

Birmingham-based GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison serves as vice president of public affairs for Clearview AI, which has been pitching its services to law-enforcement agencies and casino operators, among others. Garrison is the one-time campaign manager and mistress for former U.S. Sen. (R-AL) and Alabama attorney general Luther Strange -- and her social-media presence appears to have gone dark since her ties to Clearview became public.

Reports Betsy Swan at Daily Beast:

A facial-recognition company that contracts with powerful law-enforcement agencies just reported that an intruder stole its entire client list, according to a notification the company sent to its customers.

In the notification, which The Daily Beast reviewed, the startup Clearview AI disclosed to its customers that an intruder “gained unauthorized access” to its list of customers, to the number of user accounts those customers had set up, and to the number of searches its customers have conducted. The notification said the company’s servers were not breached and that there was “no compromise of Clearview’s systems or network.” The company also said it fixed the vulnerability and that the intruder did not obtain any law-enforcement agencies’ search histories.

An attorney for Clearview quickly went into damage-control mode:

Tor Ekeland, an attorney for the company, said Clearview prioritizes security.

“Security is Clearview’s top priority,” he said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw, and continue to work to strengthen our security.”

The firm drew national attention when The New York Times ran a front-page story about its work with law-enforcement agencies. The Times reported that the company scraped 3 billion images from the internet, including from Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo. That process violated Facebook’s terms of service, according to the paper. It also created a resource that drew the attention of hundreds of law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, according to that report. In a follow-up story, The Times reported that law-enforcement officials have used the tools to identify children who are victims of sexual abuse. One anonymous Canadian law-enforcement official told the paper that Clearview was “the biggest breakthrough in the last decade” for investigations of those crimes.

What could the breach mean for Clearview? That remains unclear:

The notification did not describe the breach as a hack. David Forscey, the managing director of the no-profit Aspen Cybersecurity Group, said the breach is concerning.

“If you’re a law-enforcement agency, it’s a big deal, because you depend on Clearview as a service provider to have good security, and it seems like they don’t,” Forscey said.

Facial-recognition technology—which matches photos of unidentified victims or suspects against enormous databases of photos—has long drawn intense criticism from privacy advocates. They argue it could essentially mean the end of personal privacy, especially given the proliferation of security cameras in public places. Some law-enforcement officials, meanwhile, see it as a tool with enormous potential value.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison, who once trashed Alabama political foes for allegedly taking campaign cash from gambling interests, now cozies up to casino operators in Las Vegas to pitch facial-recognition technology

Jessica Garrison addresses gambling execs in Las Vegas

Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison is committing acts of political hypocrisy that might make U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blush. No kidding.

What have we learned about Garrison's role as vice president of public affairs for a shadowy facial-recognition company called Clearview AI? For one, the company -- with Garrison as its PR face -- tends to take actions that contradict its public statements. Consider this from a report at BuzzFeed News:

Despite its claim last week that it “exists to help law enforcement agencies,” Clearview has also been working with entities outside of law enforcement. [CEO Hoan] Ton-That told BuzzFeed News on Jan. 23 that Clearview was working with “a handful of private companies who use it for security purposes.” Marketing emails from late last year obtained by BuzzFeed News via a public records request showed the startup aided a Georgia-based bank in a case involving the cashing of fraudulent checks.

[Last October], a company representative was slated to speak at a Las Vegas gambling conference about casinos’ use of facial recognition as a way of "rewarding loyal customers and enforcing necessary bans." Initially, Jessica Medeiros Garrison, whose title was stated on the conference website as Clearview’s vice president of public affairs, was listed on a panel that included the head of surveillance for Las Vegas' Cosmopolitan hotel. Later versions of the conference schedule and Garrison’s bio removed all mentions of Clearview AI. It is unclear if she actually appeared on the panel.

It no longer is unclear if Garrison appeared on the panel. We reported last week on her comments to casino operators at a panel discussion, including a photo of her just to the left of center stage. The evidence is clear that Garrison is pitching facial-recognition technology to gaming executives. Where does hypocrisy enter that picture? This is the same Jessica Medeiros Garrison -- who, while serving as campaign manager and mistress for former Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange -- verbally attacked any opponent who said anything remotely positive about gambling. Consider this from an April 2013 Legal Schnauzer post, which came roughly six months before my "arrest for blogging" in Shelby County:

We know that Strange takes hypocrisy on gambling issues to monumental dimensions. After all, this is the guy who has tried to shut down non-Indian gaming facilities, such as VictoryLand in Macon County and Center Stage Alabama in Houston County, while taking a $100,000 campaign contribution from the Poarch Creek casinos. This also is the guy who used the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) to help obscure the donation via a PAC-to-PAC transfer.

That brings us to Jessica Medeiros Garrison. She made news here last week when we reported on a press release she issued in March 2010, calling for Strange's GOP primary opponent, incumbent AG Troy King, to return any campaign funds he had received from gambling interests. That seems curious--some might say hypocritical--when you consider that Garrison now works for the very organization that helped launder gambling funds for Luther Strange in the same campaign.

What are we talking about? Before we tackle that question, let's see just how worked up Jessica Medeiros Garrison became over Troy King's campaign funding. This is from her press release, and the full release can be viewed at the end of this post:

“Gambling interests have propped up Mr. King's campaigns, back to 2006,” said the Luther Strange campaign manager, Jessica Garrison. “If he sticks to his pledge of returning direct contributions from gambling interests, he needs to return at least $190 thousand. If he gives back all of the contributions he has accepted from PACs which have received money from gambling operators, slot machine manufactures and their lobbyists, King needs to return nearly $400 thousand to keep his public pledge.”

As you can see, Jessica Garrison turned into a virtual hellcat when the subject was Troy King and his alleged ties to gambling. But what about her own ties to gambling -- and those of her long-time political benefactor, Luther Strange? Here is more from our April 2013 post:

Jessica Medeiros Garrison, it seems, tried to hold Troy King to a standard that she was not willing to meet herself.

Garrison now serves in an "of counsel" role with the large, downtown-Birmingham law firm Balch and Bingham. But her primary role seems to be serving as director of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). What is RAGA? It is an affiliate of RSLC, the organization that helped funnel Indian gaming funds to the Luther Strange campaign.

Translation: Jessica Medeiros Garrison called for Troy King to distance himself from any organization that dealt with gambling funds; Garrison herself subsequently joined an organization that . . . deals with gambling funds.

Here it is 2020, almost seven years later, and Jessica Garrison is cozying up to gaming interests in the most public of forums -- at the epicenter of American gambling, Las Vegas. When dollar signs are floating before Ms. Garrison's eyeballs, her opposition to gaming seems to drift away.

We can only imagine the guffaws that must draw from Troy King.

Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison appears to be facial-recognition company's point person for making in-roads with the gambling industry

Jessica Medeiros Garrison participates in a panel discussion on facial recognition at a gaming expo in Las Vegas.

 

News coverage of a shadowy facial-recognition company called Clearview AI has focused so far on the firm's efforts to attract business from law enforcement, with The New York Times reporting that more than 600 policing agencies have started using Clearview's technology. The company, however, is pitching its services to other business sectors, including the gaming industry -- with Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison apparently leading Clearview's efforts to attract casino dollars.

Multiple news outlets have reported that Garrison appeared on a panel about facial recognition last October hosted by the Global Gaming Expo at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. From a report at kioskmarketplace.com:

Panelist Jessica Medeiros Garrison, president of MDM27, a business development consultancy, expanded on the technology improvements, noting some products have artificial intelligence and neural networks that can adjust for angles and lighting when capturing images of peoples' faces.

"This artificial intelligence really didn't take off until the last two years," Garrison said. Not only are law enforcement agencies using it to solve crimes faster, they are finding it helps solve multiple cases simultaneously. The technology has assisted in the areas of financial fraud, violent crimes and human trafficking.

Is it a job killer?

As with other types of self-service technology, facial recognition raises the question of replacing human labor. To this point, Garrison said organizations using the technology are repurposing employees to higher-value tasks.

A Web site called cdgamingreports.com also reported on Garrison's panel appearance. Why would the gaming industry be interested in facial-recognition technology?

Casinos finally can get facial recognition technology that works, but operators must be prepared to handle all the information it will provide, a Global Gaming Expo panel said.

In the past couple of years, the technology has advanced dramatically, providing security experts with the ability to identify violent criminals or blacklisted patrons before they enter a venue or offering marketing executives the ability to obtain even more revealing data about players.

But the technology also could end the “didn’t know/can’t tell” defense for not identifying suspected “chip walkers” and others involved in potentially questionable transactions.

“The reward side is probably the sexier topic for a lot of folks in gaming,” said Nasr Sattar, vice president of NRT Technology Corp.’s Innovation Group. “Compliance is also a very risky area. No one wants to get a million dollar fine for not knowing who that person is and not reporting it.”

Sattar spoke Thursday at a G2E panel discussion on “Customer Identification Using Facial Recognition Technology: The Future is Now.” Also on the panel were Jessica Medeiros Garrison, president of MDM27 Holdings, whose company Clearview offers facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies, and David Logue, vice president of security, surveillance and nightclub compliance for the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Alec Massey, director of PwC Connected Solutions, moderated.

What insights did Garrison impart to the gaming audience? From the account at cdgamingreports.com:

Medeiros Garrison said any facial recognition program more than three or four years old is “definitely a super-crappy, old algorithm.”

She said current versions rely on recent improvements in artificial intelligence and machine learning that can account for differences in viewing angles and lighting. She said online security verification tests that require a user to identify which of several pictures contain a stop sign, for example, are a way of training an artificial intelligence algorithm.

What about other topics raised at the panel discussion? From kioskmarketplace.com:

The adoption of facial recognition software to identify customers will increase in the next few years, thanks to improvements in the technology though it has also been somewhat controversial, according to a panel talk at the recent Global Gaming Expo held at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas.

Panelists participating in the session, "Customer identification using facial recognition: the future is now," agree the technology is more reliable and robust. Accuracy has been a main challenge with facial recognition, along with privacy concerns, since businesses and law enforcement began using the technology several years ago.

"We're seeing (facial recognition) technologies actually performing now," said panel moderator Alec Massey, director of PwC Connected Solutions practice for gaming, hospitality and leisure clients. "There's a lot of good that comes with facial recognition."

Facial recognition is a form of biometric identification that self-service kiosks are using to improve customer service, the others being fingerprint, retinal, palm print and thumb print scanning. While fingerprint scanning is considered the most common type of biometric identification, facial recognition is gaining in popularity.

Several restaurants have introduced facial recognition kiosks in recent years, including Burger Fi, based in South Florida; Caliburger, based in Pasadena, California; UFood Grill in Owings Mills, Maryland; Wao Bao, based in Chicago; and Malibu Poke, based in Dallas. Airports, hotel and casinos have also used facial recognition kiosks.

Panelists said facial recognition has a number of potential benefits for gaming executives, reports cdgamingreports.com:

Logue said the most immediate use for facial recognition is in keeping venues safe because it can scan people in a crowd and quickly match hits on people with criminal or violent backgrounds.

“If you can identify them right then and stop them, think how much safer your employees and patrons and everybody is,” he said. In Nevada, casinos and other venues have the right to refuse entry in such a case.

He said the system would require databases with hundreds of thousands of images, and a need to hire additional people to manage the databases and confront those identified as risks.

Sattar said facial recognition can be vital to a casino’s handling of its own risks and rewards.

The risk side includes the reporting and compliance requirements for all types of casinos transactions.

He said one use is with someone suspected of being a chip walker, a patron who fails to cash a large amount of chips, presumably to be used for illegal payments outside the casino.

“You’ve associated that patron with a face. That goes with your compliance tools,” he said.

“In the old days, if you didn’t know, you didn’t have to report it. That’s rapidly changed.”

On the reward side, Sattar said facial recognition could eliminate gambling’s “last black hole of information:” rating table-game players.

Instead of ratings based on brief observations by harried pit supervisors using pencil and paper, facial recognition not only would recognize the player but use technology to track bet size, side bets placed, and other factors.

“There are all sorts of implications that come out of that,” he said. “You get player utilization, you understand your side bets a lot better, you understand your base bets a lot better. And finally, you understand who your players are and how you want to market to them.”

Jessica Medeiros Garrison, an Alabama GOP operative tied to Luther Strange, might get caught in a storm created by shadowy facial-recognition company

Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison could be a target of a U.S. Senate grilling in the wake of reports about her involvement with a shadowy facial-recognition company that raises constitutional questions about privacy. Garrison is listed as the primary customer contact for Clearview AI, a startup that reportedly has pitched its services to more than 600 law-enforcement agencies.

Garrison, the one-time campaign manager and mistress for former Alabama attorney general Luther Strange, apparently has made her social-media presence go dark following a 1/18/20 New York Times report about disturbing issues surrounding Clearview. In addition to Congressional scrutiny, Clearview faces a class-action lawsuit, along with demands from at least one social-media giant to cease using its online images.

Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) sent a letter last week to Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That, asking for information about a number of prickly issues related to facial-recognition. From a report at cnet.com:

Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts issued an open letter Thursday demanding answers from the creator of a controversial facial recognition app used by US law enforcement. The letter to the CEO of Clearview AI, Hoan Ton-That, follows a New York Times investigation into the software company and its app, which can identify people by comparing their photo to a database of pictures scraped from social media and other sites.

In the letter, Markey requests information from Clearview, including a full list of any entities and law enforcement agencies currently using the technology, as well as details on any past security breaches and on Clearview's employee access privileges. Markey also asks if Clearview's technology is able to recognize whether the biometric information uploaded to its systems points to children under the age of 13.

"Any technology with the ability to collect and analyze individuals' biometric information has alarming potential to impinge on the public's civil liberties and privacy," Markey wrote in his letter to Ton-That. "Clearview's product appears to pose particularly chilling privacy risks, and I am deeply concerned that it is capable of fundamentally dismantling Americans' expectation that they can move, assemble, or simply appear in public without being identified."

If Clearview makes a serious attempt to respond to Markey's queries, could the letter wind up on Garrison's desk? Given that she is listed as the company's primary contact with the public, the answer likely is yes.  Clearview touts its technology as a way to fight crime, but Markey suggests it could help facilitate crime. From a report at mediapost.com:

Markey also warns that the technology could be “weaponized” in “vast and disturbing” ways.

“Using Clearview's technology, a criminal could easily find out where someone walking down the street lives or works,” he writes. “Widespread use of your technology could facilitate dangerous behavior and could effectively destroy individuals' ability to go about their daily lives anonymously.”

As for other issues now facing Clearview . . .

* Twitter says, "Stop scraping our site for images"

Twitter sent a letter [last] week to the small start-up company, Clearview AI, demanding that it stop taking photos and any other data from the social media website “for any reason” and delete any data that it previously collected, a Twitter spokeswoman said. The cease-and-desist letter, sent [last] Tuesday, accused Clearview of violating Twitter’s policies. . . .

Clearview’s database of photos dwarfs those previously used by law enforcement agencies. Other technology companies capable of building such a tool, like Google, have decided not to because of concerns about the potential for abuse.

* I hear those lawsuits coming, coming 'round the bend . . .

Clearview AI, a start-up that reportedly sells "faceprint" databases to police departments, has been hit with a potential class-action lawsuit.

The company scraped billions of photos from Twitter, Facebook and other companies, used technology to create a faceprint database, then sold that database to police departments across the country, according to an explosive report Sunday in The New York Times.

In a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Illinois, state resident David Mutnick accuses Clearview of violating the state's biometric privacy law. That measure, considered one of the strongest in the country, requires companies to obtain consumers' written consent before compiling their faceprints.

Mutnick, who is represented by the Chicago civil rights law firm Loevy and Loevy, is seeking damages and a court order requiring Clearview to not only stop selling the material, but also expunge it.

Mutnick's lawsuit appears to be the first one against Clearview, but it likely won't be the last.

Attorney Jay Edelson, who has brought numerous privacy cases against Silicon Valley businesses, says he also expects to file suit against the company.

“What Clearview is doing is really game changing, in terms of individual autonomy and freedom,” he tells MediaPost. “And it's really scary that a startup -- just a couple of people -- can just change America.”

He adds that his goal would be to obtain a court order shuttering Clearview.

“I do not believe that what they're doing is proper, and we feel very good about being able to explain that to a court,” he says.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison provides an Alabama angle to Clearview AI, a facial-recognition company with the potential to radically alter privacy rights in the U.S.

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Have we ever prevailed in a court case, and has a judge ever ruled correctly in one of our legal matters? The answer to both, despite what trolls might think, is yes

For several years, we have received anonymous statements from trolls that go along these lines -- "You've never won a court case" or "You always think the judge is out to get you."

I generally have ignored such statements because they came from individuals who obviously were ill-informed and did not have the courage to use their names. I reconsidered that policy when an intelligent and loyal reader, someone we know long distance, recently asked, "Has a judge ever ruled correctly in one of your cases?"

This person, I know, has a serious interest in justice issues and asked the question because he genuinely wanted to know. That convinced me to think about the issue, conduct some limited research, and try my best to answer in this post.

First, I take the question to come in two parts: (1) Has a judge ever ruled correctly in a final order or a non-final order that was central to the case? (2) Have you and your wife, Carol, ever prevailed in a court case? Second, since we now live in Missouri and much of our court experience has been in Alabama, I don't have access to all relevant records at the moment. That means I'm having to work largely from memory, so my answer might not be all-inclusive, but it is pretty accurate. As to the two-part question raised above, the answer to both is yes.

Let's look at No. 1 -- Has a judge ever ruled correctly in a final order or a non-final order that was central to the case?

(A) The best example of this came in what we call "The Jail Case" (involving my unlawful arrest and incarceration in Shelby County), where U.S. District Judge R. David Proctor found that, as in forma pauperis (IFP) litigants, we were not entitled to have the clerk's office in the Norther District of Alabama, conduct service. Proctor's ruling clearly was contrary to black-letter law that applies across the country, but his incompetence forced us to waste roughly a year's time to appeal to the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. To our amazement, the appellate court got it right, with these words:

We review a district court’s sua sponte dismissal for failure to effect service under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(m) for an abuse of discretion. Richardson v. Johnson, 598 F.3d 734, 738 (11th Cir. 2010) (per curiam). “We affirm unless we find that the district court has made a clear error of judgment, or has applied the wrong legal standard.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

Without addressing the merits of the appeal, we reverse the district court’s dismissal because it should have effectuated service for the Shulers, who had IFP status. Under Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(c)(3), the district court must order that service be made by either a United States marshal, a deputy marshal, or by any person specially appointed by the court when the litigant is proceeding under IFP status.

REVERSED.

This was not a final order, settling the case, but it was on a critical matter, and a three-judge panel (Charles R. Wilson, Clinton appointee; Julie E. Carnes, Obama appointee; Jill A. Pryor, Obama appointee) got it right.


 (B) When GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison sued me for defamation, it was no surprise the case got off to an underhanded start -- considering Bill Baxley was her attorney. Baxley hired some lowlife to conduct "personal service," and he did it by throwing court papers on our driveway. You don't have to be a Harvard Law grad to know such a lame act does not qualify as service, and I argued as such in a motion before Jefferson County Circuit Judge Don Blankenship. In another shocker, Blankenship ruled correctly that service was improper. A Baxley thug solved the problem by "serving" me while I was in the Shelby County Jail. That also probably was unlawful, and the server likely lied to jail personnel that she was an attorney or minister to pull it off. I wasn't in a position to challenge the issue further, so the case moved forward.

Blankenship went on to show his true colors by awarding Garrison a $3.5-million default judgment, even though the docket shows I never was notified of the default application or the default hearing. Because of that, the award is void as a matter of law -- and it can be attacked as such at any time.

Did something fishy happen between Blankenship's correct ruling on service and his wildly incorrect ruling on the default judgment? In the interim, did he receive a favor or payment that caused him to shift from appearing to be a judge with a hint of integrity to being a crook of the worst kind? You probably can guess my answer to that question. We soon will have a post where a recently filed court document presents evidence that shows a Jefferson County judge issuing favorable rulings for a certain party soon after receiving campaign donations that appear to be in the form of bribes.

Now, let's look at question No. 2 -- Have you and your wife, Carol, ever prevailed in a court case? We separate it from question No. 1 because it's possible to prevail in court, even though the judge does not necessarily issue a correct ruling. Sometimes, the judge has no choice but to find in your favor, whether he has any integrity or not:

(A) This is the kind of case to which almost every American can relate. Somewhere around 2010 (I'm not sure of the date), a Shelby County deputy pulled me over and wrote a ticket for speeding in a school zone -- I think the allegation was that I drove 5 mph over the limit, which I think was 30 mph. The ticket, however, gave the location of the alleged offense as a place where there was no school zone, and the speed limit was 40 or 45 mph.

I challenged the ticket in court, pleaded not guilty, and the deputy failed to appear. District Judge Ron Jackson, who we know from personal experience is an absolute train wreck on the bench, had no choice but to find me not guilty and dismiss the ticket. But get this: Jackson had the audacity to ask me if I wanted to pay court costs. I already hated the SOB because of his crooked rulings in our case involving Mike McGarity, our former trespassing, criminally inclined neighbor. My response to Jackson? "I pleaded not guilty because I am not guilty. The wording on the ticket shows I'm not guilty, and that would be the case whether the deputy appeared or not. In other words, I'm not about to pay your damned court costs." Notice I did not call him "Your Honor."

(B) In late 2008, we received notice from a debt-collection outfit called CACH LLC that we owed money on what I believe was a GE VISA card. It was a relatively small sum that we allegedly owed, but Alabama legal and political thugs had just cheated me out of my job (of 20 years) at UAB, so we were in a crunch. Before long, we received notice from a Birmingham law firm called Halcomb and Wertheim that the alleged debt had been placed with them, and they intended to collect. We contacted the firm and asked them to validate the debt -- as was our right under the Fair Debt Collection  Practices Act (FDCPA). By asking for validation of the debt, we were asking Halcomb and Wertheim to provide documentation to prove they held the debt, and we owed it.

We even went to the law firm in person, seeking to get the alleged debt validated, but we never received any such documentation. It probably was a surprise to the fine lawyers at Halcomb and Wertheim, but we weren't anxious to pay a debt that maybe we did not owe.

In a brazen act of "legal ethics," Halcomb and Wertheim sued us, even though they repeatedly failed to prove we owed the debt. On the appointed date, we appeared at the Shelby County Courthouse and -- surprise, surprise -- no one from the debt-collection law firm appeared. I don't remember the judge on that one, but he had no choice but to dismiss the case.

Bottom line: Yes, we have prevailed in court, and yes, we've witnessed a judge or two rule correctly in our cases. More importantly, here is today's take-home lesson: Whether you are dealing with a traffic cop or a debt collector, it pays to fight back -- especially when you have legitimate grounds for doing so.