Thus, even if Mr. Fine should have been noticed for the January 8, 2008 hearing but was not -- and I do not see anything to support this except Fine's claim -- this failure played no role in the assessments of costs, which he indisputably owed. Thus, Mr. Fine's claim that the order to pay costs is grossly unconstitutional has no other basis in fact or law than his wishful thinking. Then, and continuing, the record reflects Mr. Fine's delusional grandiosity. Mr. Fine seems to imagine himself tilting at Constitutional windmills and vast cesspools of judicial corruption when the only issue before the court is his refusal to pay his bills. Despite his charm and superficial rationality, Mr. Fine is not behaving like someone in his right mind.
There is an additional issue that by the time Fine demanded a recusal of Yaffe, he had been ordered inactive by the California Bar but represented himself as still licensed to practice law, for which he was held in criminal contempt. Fine has a good point that Yaffe showed bias in allowing opposing counsel to act as prosecutor in this civil contempt proceeding, but he has never been imprisoned on the criminal contempt charge, and it is only the criminal contempt charge that carries a maximum five days. Thus, Richard Fine has been deliberately trying to confuse both the courts and his supporters about the legal rationale for his imprisonment and the alleged judicial abuse of the law to achieve it. You, too, I am afraid have been confused, from neglect of the record.
Similarly, in several episodes of your show, Fine declares that there is established federal law that a judge cannot rule in a case of contempt that involves a charge of misconduct against himself. Fine repeatedly cites Federal case law, Mayberry in particular, as though it were being grossly flouted. But as Judge Carla Woehrle opined, the "personal embroilment" that disqualified the judge in Mayberry from ruling on the contempt to which he was subjected involved gross, virulent and repeated personal attacks and insults that were wholly unlike the matters of principle that Fine urged against Yaffe (and all Los Angeles Superior Court judges) in a gentlemanly fashion; hence Fine's charges did not disqualify Yaffe from being unbiased or even give the appearance of his being biased. In contrast to Mr. Fine's behavior vis-Ã -vis Judge Yaffe, in Mayberry, the defendant:
"called the judge a "dirty sonofabitch," a "dirty tyrannical old dog," a "stumbling dog," and a "fool"; said that the judge was running a Spanish Inquisition; and told the judge to "Go to hell," and to "Keep your mouth shut."
The judge saved up all these insults, taking no action until the trial was over, then slammed Mayberry with more time for the contempt charges than for crimes of the case-in-chief.
Judge Yaffe's behavior in the Fine matter provides an instructive contrast. As Judge Woehrle noted:
The Mayberry Court continued as follows: "The vital point is that in sitting in judgment on such a misbehaving lawyer the judge should not himself give vent to personal spleen or respond to a personal grievance."
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