Rick Werlin, Libia Gil and Francisco Escobedo are still pals; the culture of silence continues at CVESD

See all Francisco Escobedo posts.

An open letter to Pam, Larry, Rick, Libby, and Francisco:

Pamela B. Smith
Larry Cunningham
Francisco Escobedo
Rick Werlin
Libia Gil

Congratulations to board members Pamela B. Smith and Larry Cunningham. You have done an excellent job of socializing new board recruits into CVESD's culture of silence. It seems Chula Vista Elementary School District maintains many of the policies of administrators Libia Gil and Rick Werlin all these years after they left under cloudy circumstances.

I found this on Rick Werlin's Facebook page:


Rick Werlin recently got me thinking about CVESD's culture of silence when I noticed the above image on Rick Werlin's Facebook page. It says, "Everyone comes with baggage. Find someone who loves you enough to help you unpack."

I have a sneaking suspicion that Rick Werlin's pals helped him haul all his baggage up to the attic, and now Rick tries not to think about all that stuff mouldering away just above his head.

Here's the problem, educators.

Even with a pal like new superintendent Francisco Escobedo, whom you can trust to maintain your system of secrecy, your issues aren't resolved.

In fact, even with your pal Daniel Shinoff using the taxpayer-funded courts in his five-year effort to shut down my website, your issues still aren't resolved. (That pesky Constitution is the problem. You thought being VIP educators trumped the Constitution, didn't you? Sorry, that only works within your school district.)

I would suggest that all of you unpack that baggage again in the context of a truth and reconciliation meeting.

Yours truly,
Maura Larkins

Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz v. Maura Larkins defamation suit finally takes a step toward wrapping up

Good news for Bertha Lopez three days after her arraignment.

Today Stutz law firm finally filed a request for judgment in the Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz v. Maura Larkins defamation case. The lawsuit has been going on for over five years, and it has already gone to the Court of Appeal once, resulting in a loss for Stutz in its effort to enforce a bizarre injunction.

Stutz waited over five months to file for judgment since my answer was stricken on July 27, 2012. I have know idea why they waited so long.

I imagine Judge Judith Hayes wasn't happy about the long wait. Here are some quotes from the court transcripts showing how intensely Judge Judith Hayes wants to silence me.

Judge Hayes absolutely refused, even when striking my answer, to state whether she was aware that she was accusing me of currently publishing statements that had actually been erased from my website or were from public court records.

Even James Holtz seems to have some qualms about the judge's actions. He actually waived the $5000 sanction she gave me on May 30, 2012.

I am very confident that her decision to strike my answer will be overturned on appeal.

There is good news for each of the 100 people sued without being named by Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz in its defamation case against me. They've all been dismissed from the case!

Chula Vista Elementary School District is part and parcel of the case. My website discussed in detail the illegal actions of Bertha Lopez, Pam Smith, Larry Cunningham, Cheryl Cox and Patrick Judd. Nobody wants to believe that there is corruption in schools (that's where we send our babies!), and I was slow to believe it myself, but White Chalk crime is real.

In 2008, Bertha Lopez and the rest of the CVESD board gave tax dollars to support Stutz law firm in this case, although it is illegal for public entities to sue for defamation. CVESD hired Stutz to quash my deposition subpoenas for board members. Why didn't they pay one of their other law firms to do it? Perhaps they didn't want their other lawyers to know the facts of the case.

The request is a bit odd in some respects.

Stutz sued me in October 2007, but its prove-up of damages only mentions hits on my website for December 2010 and beyond. Where are the damages that Stutz claimed to have in 2007 when it filed suit? How about 2008, 2009 and 11 months in 2010?

Isn't it likely that by suing me, they themselves caused my website to have more hits?

WHY DO PEOPLE FIRE THEIR LAWYERS?

Also, I imagine most people look at my site and think, "Ah! A disgruntled ex-employee!" Of course, other people might think, "Ah! Only the disgruntled ex-employees will tell the truth about what's going on inside their place of employment."

But the point that Stutz is supposed to address in its prove-up is whether it was actually damaged. Did it lose clients because of my website? How can they tell? It is true that some clients left, such as Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College, but wasn't it most likely a result of all the legal problems that the college had when Stutz represented them? (Think Omero Suarez, David Agosto.) If they'd been happy with Stutz, they wouldn't fire their law firm just because I had issues with Stutz. I'm sure Grossmont-Cuyamaca knows much more about Stutz than I do.

Latest correspondence in Stutz v. Larkins defamation suit

Here's the message I just send to Stutz law firm regarding its demands for changes in my website, pursuant to its defamation suit against me.

June 9, 2009

Dear Stutz, Artiano, Shinoff & Holtz:

A person can disagree with Stutz without saying or implying that Stutz' actions are illegal or unprofessional. Obviously, there was a parting of the ways between Stutz and Bob Gallagher. Bob clearly did not see eye to eye with Dan Shinoff, Ray Artiano, James Holtz, etc. There's nothing in the court order that prevents me from saying so. People are allowed to dislike Stutz law firm, and they're not legally required to keep their feelings secret.

And, conversely, Stutz is allowed to nurture whatever hostile feelings it wishes against me and others.

Some Stutz lawyers get so angry that one would hardly be surprised to see smoke rising from the top of their heads. Ray Artiano was so mad during his deposition that his face kept twitching. Kelly Angell pointed both her index fingers at me in court, with thumbs cocked as if she were shooting me with two guns at once. (And I'll bet Stutz doesn't even charge the taxpayers for the theatrics. Rage and fury are thrown in for no charge!)

Citizens are allowed to criticize the actions of public entities and other organizations, such as tax-free educational institutions like Californians Against Lawsuit Abuse. America is what it is because of freedom of speech. You have no authority to stop me from presenting my ideas about education and the justice system.

Stutz obtained a summary judgment that it didn't deserve in its defamation case against me. The judge didn't consider my evidence, and relied on the declaration of a man (Dan Shinoff) who refused to be deposed and refused to produce documents. I would think that Stutz wouldn't want to push this too far.

If I were Stutz, I'd quit while I was ahead. But I guess that sort of advice is lost on Stutz. Stutz has had so many chances to quit while it was ahead in my case, but didn't take advantage of any of them. You know when the perfect time would have been to settle with me? Feb. 11, 2003, the day my OAH decision came out. Or Dec. 18, 2004, when my Superior Court case got thrown out.

At that time I probably would have exchanged confidentiality for a song.

Why did Stutz wait until I was back up and running, with a successful website, and THEN ask me to keep my information under wraps? Honestly, sometimes I wonder if the guys in charge of your firm have common sense.

I've heard that Daniel Shinoff considers "The Art of War" to be his personal bible, but I don't think he's read it carefully. Charging ahead with as many weapons as you can muster is not always the best plan. Sometimes you can defang an opponent with a smile and a handshake.

Can you believe that our trial date is just a month away? Maybe that's what we should be focusing on, rather than whether it is defamatory to say that Bob Gallagher left the firm because he didn't like Stutz' tactics.

Respectfully,
Maura Larkins

[Maura Larkins' comment: A report I found on NPR today helped me understand what's going on here. "Through their research, Kahneman and Tversky identified dozens of these biases and errors in judgment, which together painted a certain picture of the human animal. Human beings, it turns out, don't always make good decisions, and frequently the choices they do make aren't in their best interest...In other words, if the human brain is hard-wired to make serious errors, that implies all kinds of things about the need for regulation and protection."

Harsh disciplinarian=secret rule breaker?

Have you ever noticed that the teachers who are the most harsh disciplinarians of children, severely punishing minor infractions, are often also the most likely to break rules themselves?

In the teachers lounge at Castle Park Elementary a few years ago I saw the aftermath of a food fight by teachers on the last day of school. It took the custodians a week to clean the sticky soda, whipped cream and other food from the walls, carpets and upholstery. One of the participants in the fight explained to me that "we needed to let off steam." How could this teacher pass the age of forty without discovering some form of stress relief that didn't involve vandalism? And how could she show so much contempt for kids who failed on one occasion to finish their homework (she called them "losers"?

This teacher was a charter member of "The Castle Park Family," five of whose members were administratively transferred out of the school in August 2005. These teachers were not into good behavior, they were into power. They didn't lose their jobs; they were simply transferred to another school. But they themselves had caused a good many excellent teachers and principals to lose their jobs or be transferred out of the school.

The behavior of the Castle Park Family (a group that now has taken over Chula Vista Educators) is bullying, dishonest and disruptive, the sort of that would earn children a trip to the principals office for a lecture on playing well with others.

Not surprisingly, this same type of relationship, in which rule-breakers harshly enforce the rules over those below them, occurs in the relationship between CVESD district administrators and teachers.

The situation is somewhat analogous to the village in the new movie The White Ribbon which just won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival. (Is this analogy allowable, Mr. Shinoff? I'll grant you that the children in the movie are the generation that grew up to perpetrate the actions you don't want me to discuss, but surely I'm allowed to discuss the Palme d'Or prize winner without getting sued by your law firm!) Reuters describes the setting for the story: An inhuman, never questioned moral code holds sway, especially over the children who are constantly punished, both physically and psychologically, for the slightest infraction. The women are similarly brutalized and under the thumb of the village's unabashed patriarchy. The male adults, on the other hand, engage in clandestine acts of evil and cruelty that are kept hushed up...One day the order of things begins to unravel.

That last part about hushing up wrongdoing makes the analogy with Castle Park Elementary and CVESD complete.

Will the court quash my deposition subpoenas of CVESD officials?

I just checked online to see the Tentative Rulings on CVESD's motion to quash my deposition subpoenas of Tom Cruz and Susan Fahle (in photo at left), and found that the court has continued the motion for two weeks.

This means I don't have to put my suit on tomorrow morning and go down to the courthouse, which is a relief, even though I always enjoy visiting downtown San Diego and the stately Hall of Justice. It's just that I've got a lot going on right now.

Also, my motion to compel the deposition of attorney Daniel Shinoff will have to wait two weeks, as will the Motion for Summary Judgment filed by Stutz law firm.