B. Lafferty wrote:
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B. Lafferty wrote:
He may ultimately not prevail, but Sam is not without
brains and courtroom savvy (recall that he argued and won his own case
before the US Supreme Court).

What's actually appalling here is the conduct of the judge. A pro se party
not allowed to speak to the issue of a protective order being granted is
shocking.

Transcript of Hearing of April 6, 2004
STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE CIRCUIT COURT: SECOND JUDICIAL CIRCUIT
COUNTY OF AIKEN

MR. SLOAN: Okay. Your Honor, first place, about the costs I -- like I
say, after the hearing was held before Judge Hocker I drove down there
from Laurens to Aiken, and I went to the Clerks office, and I asked
them exactly about how much was the filing fee to file an appeal. I
told them I was going to file an appeal, but I wanted to give my
brother a little bit of time to comply with the Court Order in case --
in the off-chance he would decide to comply with it. They told me that
they did not know what the filing fee was. But what I should just do
was go ahead and file a Notice of Intent to Appeal and then if they --
once they found out what the filing fee was they would send it back to
me and they would notify me as to what the filing fee was. So I did
exactly what -- what they told me to do. You can ask them in the
Clerk's office and I'm sure they remember the conversation that we had
about this filing fee.

Now, I'd also like to point out that Ms. Kennedy was in default for
one year in this case. My mother died in May -- in May 16th of 2002. I
filed -- as soon as I found out my brother didn't file anything, I'm
the one who filed the death certificate and started this whole
proceeding. My brother did not appear in this case until January 2003,
nine months later. And that appearance wasn't served on my either I
didn't finally get service on the proceedings until August of 2003,
and then finally this case was transferred around to several different
judges, and finally wound up here. So they are one year late in
appearing in this case. They are in default a couple of months after
my mother died in May 2002. So here they come in saying I'm two days
late. Another thing about the transcript is, Judge Hocker made the
statement in open court that he was not ready to receive any filings
from me by mail. As a matter of fact, I had sent him a pleading and he
-- he had the envelop in open court and -- in Laurens. He said, I
received this in the mail, I'm not going to open any envelops from you
at all. And he handed it back to me in the presence of Ms. Kennedy, my
adversary. And here he's making a statement that he's not willing to
open any mail that I send him about the case; any pleadings, any
motions, any affidavits, anything like that. He wouldn't even open the
letter. So how can he suddenly come around and say that I'm two days
late for filing the grounds for appeal when he isn't even -- he's on
record, and that's why, again, I say that the transcripts of this case
is very necessary, because if the transcript is here I can show you
exactly where he said this.

I also asked him questions about the time to appeal. He said, well,
I'm not here to give legal advice. Very strange that a judge would say
of the time limits and not admitting -- things like that, that he
would say he's not going to give legal advice. That's not legal
advice, that's procedure. Procedure varies from courtroom to courtroom
from state to state. I live in New York. In New York the time to
appeal starts with service of a Notice - an affidavit of service with
Notice of Entry. That's - Affidavit of Service with Notice of Entry
starts the time limit of thirty days to run an appeal in New York.
That's a case I'm familiar with.

By the way, you may not know this about me, but I once argued orally
before the United States Supreme Court. It's a famous case. I'm the
last non-lawyer ever to argue and win a case in the United States
Supreme Court.

THE COURT: And I hope you stuck to the subject matter before the
Supreme Court in Washington better than you're doing today. Because
most of what you said doesn't have anything to do with the issue
before the Court.

Yep, really shows his courtroom savvy.