I recently filed two Attorney Discipline Office complaints, one against Attorney Hilliard and another against Attorney Bolton for failing to provide me with a properly and equitably marked exhibit book for a December 2023 Trial in which I am seeking records on the downtown barriers and the Nashua Performing Arts Center.
The City has hired high-powered outside counsel to defeat me in this request for public information. The City has retained McLean Middleton to represent two shell corporations established by the City to funnel public money into a private corporation for the Art Center and Attorney Russ Hilliard to represent the interests of the City. Attorney Bolton, Attorney Leonard, and now newly hired Attorney Barnes are also on the case. There have been five city attorneys in this case, and now, six against me, while I have no legal representation. To date, the City has spent almost $400,000 on this case. This City has many records to hide on the Nashua Arts Center, as it appears the City misused and committed fraudulent acts with public money.
The first three days of the Trial were in December, and the rules for submitting evidence required that the plaintiff mark the exhibits with numbers and the defendants mark their exhibits with letters. This rule is designed to clarify who produced what exhibits.
At the trial management conference, the City’s books were not marked properly, and the Judge ordered the City to redo their books to comply with Court rules. How could attorneys collectively with over 150 years of experience not properly mark exhibit books?
When Ortolano received her exhibit book, which the Court ordered redone, it did not contain the index and the letter markings to identify each exhibit. The City gave all of the parties at the defense table, the Judge, and the court stenographer books that were organized with a letter identifier for each exhibit. However, my book was double-sided printed and numerically Bates-stamped with no alphabetized page separators.
The City deliberately produced this book in this format to make it more cumbersome for me to reference the exhibits during the Trial. I would have to flip between pages to determine whether the exhibit I referred to was A, B, or C. The City deliberately took the time to create a “unique” book for me.
When the December Trial began, I put this issue before Judge Temple and noted my concern that the City did not properly mark my exhibit book. I carried in an example of a city exhibit book from a past trial and showed the Judge that, in the past, the City did comply with the Court’s rule for marking exhibits. Judge Temple remained silent on the issue, but during the Trial, he offered me the use of the Court’s book to more easily reference the exhibits I wanted to present to my witnesses and the Court. I refused to accept the City’s improperly marked exhibits. This resulted in one full day of the Trial being wasted on a page-by-page review and acceptance of the City’s exhibits.
These underhanded and dirty tricks done by high-powered yet dishonorable attorneys have no place in the courtroom. But in reality, they do when a judge is in the pocket of a city. Judge Temple has not been impartial or given me the expedited fair Trial I was to be afforded by the Constitution and due process rules. The tactics of the Court run up the cost and prevent citizens from affording representation. I have worked hard to open records in Nashua while going up against the single most corrupt enterprise in the State of New Hampshire—the New Hampshire Judicial system.
