Say what?

Much of the kind of law our firm engages in can only be described as ... hmm ... let's say routine.

Sure some difficult issues arise that seem to stir the hearts of our young lawyers, causing discussions about how best to approach them. We who proof their title opinions rarely understand what they're talking about, much less what the issue is.

So we take solace from the documents we look at, where we find strange names -- someone actually named their child Theophilus, as I discovered today -- or interesting provisions in wills, my personal favorite and the subject of a future post, or the creative ways individuals come up with to avoid some perceived government intrusion into their lives.

Take the woman who filed an affidavit in which she made a declaration "denying existence of corporation."

The first notable item on the document is that she puts a copyright symbol at the end of her name. Then, as if that's not strange enough she lists her name variously as Ruth Eleanor, of Coleman, and Ruth Eleanor: Coleman.

In the affidavit she says she denies that the United States, State of Texas, Johnson County, Cleburne, the Cleburne Police Department, all bar associations and others are not corporations and have no claim against her natural body. What claim? Who knows.

In yet another document, she asserts that her property has been overvalued by the county appraiser. The landowner behind her, she claims, has "started up a sand pitt mine" -- I have no idea, so don't ask -- that has the potential to "greatly devalue my potentials to sell my property," one of the more coherent phrases in the document.

Property tax, she says, is a fraud and violates the Constitution. Perhaps the most serious accusation, though, is, "You did not reveal that I ... would give all My God Given Rights up for the mere privilege of being a land owner." Shame on the appraiser.

She does evidence one lawyerly trait, though -- a propensity to capitalize words for reasons that are not immediately evident to the average reader.

Still another would-be lawyer pro se objected to her mortgage holder trying to take her home away. She lost her case in district court and appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and we happen to have a copy of the judgment.

The court quite diplomatically said that "neither the original motion nor her brief on appeal clarifies the precise nature of her claims.

Gee whiz, your honors, what's so imprecise about "defendants cannot produce and have not produced PROMISSORY NOTE, No Debt without Note Mortgage is NULL and VOID."

Show me the note, buddy. That's easy enough.

Unfortunately for her, the defendants produced the rest of the plaintiff's documents, which pretty much made no sense, and convinced the courts that the plaintiff not only had failed to 'splain herself but was being a nuisance.

The Fifth District judgment warned "that repetitive filings of frivolous claims ... constitutes abuse of the judicial process, for which a court may impose monetary sanctions."

How's that for a nice way of saying "Knock it off, or we'll fine you"?

Whoever said that the person who represents himself has a fool for a client was both vindicated and shown to be a master of understatement.