My Fight to Expose the Misconduct of Judge Christopher M. Keating and Disqualify Him From My Case

      Judges typically look at self-represented parties like most wealthy people look at homeless panhandlers. I have dealt with the consequences of representing myself in multiple states. I learned quite a bit about how judges are supposed to act in court along the way. 

      I often call judges out when they fall short of their standards. I am continuously reminded of the fact that professional standards for everyone in the legal community are a complete joke in most jurisdictions. How else could an entire profession like lawyers have such a bad reputation for lying while also having rules that say they are not allowed to lie in every state in this union? 

      Judge Christopher Meade Keating seems to be pretty OK with all the lies and the lying lawyers who tell them in my three associated probate cases. He doesn't care about perjury, and he ignores it when well-known attorneys lie in writing repeatedly. 

     Judge Keating is a new judge, but he's been one of the most powerful attorneys in the state for years. He was once the "Administrator of Courts" here and has been a fixture on the Judicial Council for nearly a decade. He was even "Executive Director" of the Judicial Council while he was still an attorney. He's a Bar Association Fellow and a past Director of the Bar Foundation (a pair of distinctions my sister Amy Chenette's snake attorney David Eby shares with him). 

      Even more concerning, Judge Keating's Judicial Council status means he has a direct impact on funding Attorney David Eby's passion project: CASA NH. It is the state version of a national non-profit designed to pay attorneys to train volunteers and provide paid Guardian Ad Litem services for cases across the state involving children. Eby has had a very prominent role in the organization the entire time Christopher Keating had a hand in deciding the group's annual funding. All it takes is a simple Google search to find all the evidence of their close connections and financial links.

     I filed an Emergency Motion to Disqualify Judge Keating and Vacate Dismissal Orders on January 6th, 2023 in one of my three cases. It was the culmination of an effort to let this judge know that I have evidence of a major conflict of interest he failed to disclose. My next step is filing a formal complaint with the Judicial Conduct Committee. 

     Judge Keating lied to the Governors Executive Council himself when he laid out his formal reasoning for seeking a judicial position in the first place. Hindsight being 20/20 in my case, he even lied about how he would treat self-represented parties in his court: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8ohu53lodil5cl/judgekeatinglies.mp3?dl=0 

     The judge left no doubt as to his strong feelings about CASA as an organization at the same hearing on his nomination for the bench. He also promised he was ready to tackle the challenges of Probate matters in this clip: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b3wxo87wpnqrkyp/keatingprobatecasa.mp3?dl=0 

     Judge Keating repeatedly harps on The New Hampshire Constitution's Part One, Article 35 in his commentary during the full confirmation hearing. He even states at one point that there is "poetry in that language" about every litigant deserving judges as "impartial as the lot of humanity will admit." He uses words like honor and integrity, guideposts and guardrails, care and preparation. But he does not live by those words, at least not from my observation of his conduct in my ongoing cases. 

     In a perfect world this biased judge would be seriously admonished for the type of behavior he is exhibiting in my cases. Instead, he'll most likely fight to stay on these cases if only to avoid the embarrassment of admitting he made serious mistakes in his rulings and discriminated against a self-represented party, directly contradicting the promises he made at his confirmation hearing. 

     I would also be remiss if I did not mention that Judge Keating is one half of a legal power couple. His wife is none other than Abigail Albee, who happens to be the Clerk of the Belknap County Superior Court. I can understand why she hasn't gone ahead and changed her last name. Especially considering she is also on the Rules Committee for the State Supreme Court. 

      Could this be why Judge Keating acts like being appealed will be no big deal for him? Does he think his significant other will be his ace in the hole? Maybe we should be using the phrase Judge Keating brought up himself at his confirmation hearing. Maybe she's his "finger on the scale." These two love birds bring home an estimated combined state base pay of nearly a quarter million dollars each year. They are both in a position to perpetuate the status quo where lawyers rule the roost and self-represented parties can go pound sand. 

      I had a particularly harsh experience with the Belknap Superior Court clerks in another case I was involved in where they failed to deliver my paperwork to the judge promptly. I also helped out on another case with investigation work that connected a now-retired Superior Court judge to an attorney who was pressing a very publicized case involving the Governors Island Club. The judge and attorney grew up living on the same street and maintained an outside of court friendship. I even wound up getting jury duty later on at the same Superior Court, where I had to disqualify myself because I knew too much about the offending lawyer. 

    At this point, despite the overwhelming patience and resolve to stay professional in these matters that I've shown, Judge Keating continues to disrespect me and my position in these matters. I might as well be wearing this shirt to all my court appearances:

The People vs. Larry Flynt, 1996

      I am in a real damned if I follow the rules, damned if I break the rules kind of position, and I've seen this movie before. I know how it ends. I've angered a judge, and he's going to let me know how much in his future adverse rulings. So, I pulled no punches in my most recent hearing in this case, telling the judge he was totally out of order: 

Laconia_CC_CR2_20221227-1040_01d919dfa50722d0[1].mp3 (dropbox.com)

      In addition to being a career writer and a reluctant part-time lawyer, I am a student of human behavior. I've been lucky enough to acquire a world class education from three major military academies, which means I know the definition of honor. The honor codes at all three schools made it an expellable offense to even tolerate lying. I served as a juror for an honor board case once and fulfilled that duty faithfully. 

     We suffer from a very serious problem when it comes to the justice system in this country, which trickles down to every local court. There is a glaring, untenable lack of accountability for judicial and attorney misconduct. It is much worse than the so-called "Blue Wall of Silence" that permeates so many police department and law enforcement agencies. If you're not in the club, you don't get the perks of membership like fair hearings and equal treatment under the law. 

    I fully expect Judge Keating to cling to this case like a newborn baby to his mother's teat at feeding time. I don't hold out hope for the Judicial Conduct Committee to take action against him, but the complaint I need to file should still go on his record. Hopefully he will be the one who actually learns a lesson while he is doing his best to teach me one with his harsh treatment for my refusal to deal with his bullshit.

     I find in situations like this that if you're only fighting for yourself, the victories are hollow and the defeats are easier to accept. I therefore choose to fight for the greater good of an entire class of self-represented people that are bound to follow me in courtrooms all across the country. I will expose the dark heart of this court system and show people that fighting back is possible if you approach it the right way and never give up. Stay tuned for more. I don't see this saga ending anytime soon.  

Crappy Holidays: Court Setbacks and Fighting the Good Fight Against All Odds

 

     It used to be I was always stuck in the middle of family photos like the ones above from the 80s. These were taken during a much happier holiday season than this one is turning out to be. Now, I am locked in a legal battle with these two grown women that is so bitter we can't even talk about it. Everything goes through lawyers for them. I recently volunteered a settlement offer that fell on deaf ears. I was not looking forward to what I would have to do if we couldn't settle.

     The court here in Laconia, New Hampshire gave me a few early victories, but the honeymoon didn't last. I recently had my entire equity case thrown out, and both sisters and the original estate attorney were basically given a pass for all the claims I brought. 

      I was initially disappointed. The more I read the decisions, though, the more I realized I had more reasons to be hopeful for a reversal on appeal. Thanks to one of the most dishonest attorneys I've ever had the displeasure of dealing with, Mr. David Eby, the judge on this case is now aware of this very site. Since the biased decisions came down, I have vehemently protected my rights to due process. 

     I formally protested the favorable treatment granted to the attorneys in this case in three motions to recuse Judge Keating, the presiding decider on all three of our associated cases in probate. I will provide copies of a number of motions and other documents here in the coming weeks. For now, take a gander at this document from a little over a year ago, signed by the former administrator's original attorney: 

      Willis "Slowboat" Sloat strikes again. My sisters filed signed assent forms in the wake of receiving this letter, but they refused to provide the waivers in interest Sloat suggested, so I did not file an assent to that distribution. If I did sign my assent without those waivers in hand, my sisters could get the distribution approved without the waivers in place and then try to re-sell their 1/3 interest to me on top of what I already agreed to pay for it in what was dubbed "the note payable."

      By the way, all those scribbled math problems relate directly to Sloat double-billing me for paying down the mortgage. Instead of taking the death date appraisal of $160,000 and subtracting the remaining mortgage at the time of my father's death from that figure, Sloat tried to pass off numbers that had me both paying down the mortgage and then on top of that having to pay my sisters the difference between the price of the paid-down mortgage and that death date appraisal number. 

      It has been a consistent theme for my sisters as they have tried multiple ways to sell the property again or get me to pay more money than initially agreed for it, all after agreeing to sell it to me for a set price in 2019. The first time they sought and received a license to sell, it was only after Maryjane's attorney (Jeanne Saffan) colluded with Attorney Sloat after she complained to me in emails about how incompetent he was. Sloat even wrote into a pleading that he anticipated having to pay Saffan at least $3,000 in legal fees out of the estate. She went on sabbatical and never returned. She will still be featured in a special installment here in the near future, as she is really the chief legal snake behind the architecture of this double cross: 

    Saffan easily manipulated Sloat and basically started trying to do his work without the authority to do so and against all ethical standards involving estates. While Sloat and my sister Amy were completely silent, Saffan was aggressive and happy to talk to me. She seemed nice enough at the time, but she turned into a cunning cobra so quickly it was shocking. 

     Maryjane, Saffan's client, assured me this woman had her best interests in mind and she wanted to make sure Amy didn't double cross us in the end somehow. Maryjane was always concerned Amy would find a way to use her administrator position to her own personal advantage. She insisted we work together to stop that almost every step of the way until she plunged the knife in my back by actually aligning with Amy and the same lawyer she also called a fool.

      Saffan and Sloat then coordinated on the effort to obtain the license to sell, which failed on pretty elementary grounds after being initially granted under falsely-characterized emergency conditions. It turns out there is plenty of precedent law to disallow any such sale without all three assents when there are three related beneficiaries. Judge Keating also cited the same line of precedent law when I attempted to file for an injunction that would prevent my sisters selling the property out from underneath me. He ordered the request moot based on his reversal of the certificate to sell. 

      Now, my sisters are pursuing a "Petition to Partition" which could either mean we find a way to divide the property in three or... drumroll, please.. we sell the house on the open market. It would seem by sheer logic that due to the prior order, my sisters would not have the option to get the court to force a sale without my consent. Yet that is the stated primary aim of their petition to the court. I filed a motion to dismiss that petition long before my sisters had their attorneys answer my equity complaint. Before I could even get a hearing on my motion to dismiss, the attorneys for my sisters have been given hearings and decisions on their similar motions in my equity case. Judge Keating has shown a clear pattern in all the cases of rewarding parties who file late, accepting false testimony without affidavits or evidence, tolerating perjury, and treating attorneys a whole lot better than me.  

      It gets worse. Attorney Jeanne Saffan did not let her sabbatical stop her from influencing Amy and assisting her with the completion of the double cross. Lo and behold, Amy ended up hiring an attorney that used to work very closely with Saffan's ex-husband, the father of her only child. He just happened to be the head of the probate team at one of the largest law firms in New England. 

     This was only after Amy abandoned her administrator post after changing the mortgage bills to go to only her through her husband's email address. The estate subsequently missed three payments on the mortgage thanks to her lack of due diligence. Her initial hire, "Slowboat" Sloat, also did absolutely nothing to ensure those payments were made after he quit his post around the same time. 

      A full review of the record reveals attorneys getting very special treatment. The judge has been provided a long list of their transgressions, chief of which is Sloat's multiple perjured statements made in open court. There are no affidavits in the case on file for any of my sisters. Attorneys cannot typically testify for their clients. Even if they could, there are no affidavits on file for the attorneys in any of the associated probate cases. I have provided each and every affidavit. Many of my sworn statements were ignored by Judge Keating while bare allegations leveled against me were accepted by the judge as if they were backed by affidavits and evidence. 

      All the attorneys have told their own respective lies. Attorney Eby couldn't get through the first page of one of his latest pleadings without presenting a complete lie to the judge. He insisted five paragraphs in that this dispute over the property has been going on since my father died when that is completely false, and Eby is in a position to know it's false. 

      What's most disturbing to me beyond Eby's connection to Saffan is that he passes himself off as a man dedicated to the better part of the legal community. He claims to be devoutly religious and does very important child advocacy work when he is not lying through his teeth in written pleadings. He's the kind of attorney who is so high and mighty, it seems that even judges are afraid to rule against him. His image taking a hit would be like the whole system sporting a black eye as a result. If even this guy is corrupt, who among the lawyers who secretly run this whole circus can be trusted? His spit and polished record and resume hides the charlatan attorney within his soul who will happily ruin someone's American Dream to advance the goals of a lying client.

     I do not fear a man like David Eby, though he may be talented and slick, because I know his type. I've worked closely around lawyers of all stripes. Sometimes against them, and a few times with them. I worked with the lawyer who sued the owners of the UFC for destroying the PRIDE league after acquiring it from Japanese owners rumored to have Yakuza connections. I worked with the bankruptcy trustee in the Xyience case (see www.xyiencesucks.com) at the end of the situation that first brought me into the legal realm of self-representation. 

      The main casino baron lawyer I faced in the Xyience case even brought me into his office once for a formal conference to try to explain his clients were good and decent human beings. The ambiance in the conference room was like a Vampire's lair. Not too many years after that meeting, the entire firm dissolved in the wake of a major scandal. The moral of the story here is: "Don't Seek revenge. The rotten fruits will fall by themselves." 

      David Eby is not the most formidable attorney I faced in all my unsolicited legal experience. I've fought through multiple major cases across the country on my own dime with a very limited budget. I've worked against the anti-pro-se current every step of the way, sometimes spending years trying to get respect from biased judges. Like it did in my very first case, one principle stands true through all of them. "The truth shines through in the end." David Eby will come to see that in due time. 

     Unfortunately every legal case I've ever been involved in eventually reveals some corrupt aspect of the legal system that is broken beyond repair. Even in victory, I often fell short of my most sincere goals that could have gone further to help others facing the same situations in the future. Here, the next guy in my shoes is who I'm really fighting for. I don't want what's happening to me to be anyone else's reality, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to make precedent law in this area. The fact is, self-represented parties make up a considerable segment of the legal system, and if they are treated so poorly and minimized so easily, there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. The scales have to be evened out, and pro-se parties need to have equal access to the process. I will not stop my advocacy and public protests until they do get their equal footing. I will lead the charge, and I will take up the banner. 

     I will be working over the next few weeks on major appeals of decisions I anticipate will be finalized in the near future. This might be my last article for a while, but please be patient. I want to make this site a resource for others, so I ultimately plan to include every digital document I have a copy of that helps define this case. I firmly believe in the concept of sunlight being the best disinfectant. 

With Family Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

      I'm the little guy on the right in the photo above from my father's wedding to my stepmother. My two sisters look innocent enough on the left, but don't let those pink dresses fool you. They are snakes in disguise. Amy (far left) was the administrator on the estates of both my father and stepmother. 

       She had to resign after I began challenging her questionable moves regarding my father's IRA account. My stepmother died before my father, but Amy managed to transfer his IRA account into her estate and then transfer it back into his estate. 

       Prior to Amy quitting her post and hanging up on the judge at the first major hearing (see below link), my sisters and I agreed that my father's property in Belmont, New Hampshire would go to me in any distribution. Everything was moving in the right direction on this front until Maryjane (who told me repeatedly before double crossing me that she thought Amy would betray us both) teamed up with Amy and her estate attorney to sell the property without my consent. 

APRIL 21, 2022 HEARING AUDIO: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6tore04ux6sdwr/courthearingsnakesisters.mp3 

Maryjane repeatedly told me she thought the estate attorney Amy hired was incompetent, and her attorney also bashed Amy's pick to help her manage the estate. This was all before they decided to join forces and engage in an attempt to gain a license to sell the property under false pretenses. This was a blatant attempt to resell the property they already agreed to sell me for the price of the death date appraisal and my agreement to dedicate my portion of the proceeds to mortgage payments. We called it "the note payable," and this stipulation appeared in two straight sets of accounting. 

       

Willis "Slowboat" Sloat (his middle name is actually Bruce) also quit as administrator's attorney during the hearing linked above. He added insult to injury by insisting on lying about his role in making me "successor in interest" with the mortgage company. This is despite the fact that I have emails from "Slowboat" himself admitting he spoke with the mortgage company on my behalf. Sloat (pictured here on the left) continued the denials from the first hearing, even after I reversed the license to sell and filed an equity complaint against "Slowboat" and my slithering sisters. Sloat provided me multiple emails directly refuting his own lies, which I also presented to the court. This did not stop "Slowboat" Sloat. I do not see how he can possibly avoid perjury charges since he was under oath at the April 21st, 2022 hearing. 

      The motions to dismiss "Slowboat" and Chenette filed came up for a hearing on Halloween of all days. My stepmother and her only daughter she lost in a car accident shortly before her own death were both born on Halloween. I felt my younger sister's spirit in that courtroom. My living sisters did not appear either by telephone or in person. 

OCTOBER 31, 2022 MOTION TO DISMISS HEARING AUDIO: halloweenhearingaudio.mp3

        I was not intimidated by the full table of attorneys across the courtroom from me. I saw them for what they were: paid liars. Attorney David Eby is the head of the probate department for one of the largest law firms in New England. He also claims to be an upstanding member of his religious congregation. The courtroom recorder caught me chastising him for not having the courage to speak himself. He had his associate Hanna May sacrifice her integrity instead. 

       At this point, the sister snake who predicted Amy would find a way to ruin our lives with this estate is now AWOL from the proceedings. Her attorney made a weak attempt to challenge the service of the equity complaint, but she has not provided any valid response to an outstanding Motion for Summary Judgment. 

     I deliberated carefully as to whether or not I needed to create this site. Ultimately, I felt I had no other choice. The courts are taking their time with this case. I don't feel in the long run the attorneys involved will ever face the level of accountability they should for all the lies they pressed and supported to keep this charade going. I also keep hearing from everyone I tell my story to that something similar happened to them or someone they know. Not many people know how to fight back like I do. 

     There is so much to explain about how this routine small town, New Hampshire probate case turned into a ridiculous family soap opera. Over the next few weeks and months I will be populating this site with an extensive collection of court documents. The idea is to lay a framework for how you can fight back if you're in the same "Slow" boat I'm stuck in at the moment. 

     I am currently trying to get Willis "Slowboat" Sloat formally charged with perjury for claiming he had nothing to do with my "successor in interest" designation. I will provide a more full description of how we got here in the blog entries to come. Welcome to Snakesisters.com, and never forget to keep your eyes peeled for snakes in the grass.