Thursday saw another unforced error on the part of YouTuber James Freeman as an appeals court rejected his appeal of an order by the lower court as it found it had no jurisdiction to rule on anything as Freeman did not wait to file his appeal in accordance with the rules of the Court.
Freeman’s lawsuit against New Mexico’s Seventh District Court was dismissed back in May with the Court giving Freeman a fourteen-day window to amend his complaint for a third time with a focus on seeking declaratory relief against Chief Judge Mercedes Murphy of the Seventy District Court in her official capacity.
Instead of waiting fourteen days for the order to become final and waiting for the ability to appeal or standing on his pleading, Freeman immediately appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
The Appeals Court asked both sides to explain their positions as to why or why not the Court had jurisdiction to hear Freeman’s appeal since his appeal lacked the conditions to qualify for an appeal to the Appeals Court.
In the ruling, the Court sided with the defense and found that they lacked the jurisdiction to hear the case. Simply put, the fact that the matter was not resolved by Freeman waiting for the verdict to be final eliminated the Court’s ability to actually act on that verdict.
The appeal now goes back to the lower court to either confirm the dismissal of the case or again allow Freeman the opportunity to amend his again. Once the ruling is final, Freeman would theoretically have the ability to appeal again.
Freeman has been suing New Mexico’s Seventh District Court for the better part of the past two years after several issues where Freeman was found to have disrupted court proceedings and harassed staff members withing the Seventh District Court’s facilities.
The YouTuber was effectively banned from the facilities in the entire Seventh District Court unless he was escorted by a member of police. After nearly a half dozen individual protests against the ruling, Freeman sued everyone who had anything to do with the Seventh District.
Freeman argued that the punishment for his disruption violated his fifth amendment rights and essentially made fun of the rulings in continued protests at facilities in the Seventh District where he walked around empty security desks to find a sheriff to take him back through the buildings to the records area.
The ruling essentially is yet another unforced error on Freeman’s part during the lawsuit. From early questions of jurisdiction and proper service, to using a attorney more associated with farm regulations than first amendment questions, Freeman’s errors have highlighted a case that has essentially tread water for close to two years now.
We will update the story with the final decision from the lower court.
