Emergency Petition for a Temporary Restraining Order

[Munditenens Tresplet]

To the Uppermost Cort:

King John's actions have directly impacted V's ability to file an immediate public petition seeking redress. Accordingly, he has asked that I file this petition on his behalf.

Respectfully,
M. Tresplet

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Emergency Petition for Temporary Restraining Order

In the Matter of
VITEU MARCIANÜS
PETITIONER, 
v 

HIS MAJEST REGEU IAN, as MONARCH
OF TALOSSA, and INDIVIDUALLY,
RESPONDENT.


To the Clerk of the Cort and the Esteemed Justices of the Uppemost Cort of the Kingdom of Talossa:

I, Viteu Marcianüs (“petitioner”), do hereby petition this august Cort to enter a temporary restraining order enjoining His Majesty Regeu Ian (“King John”) from intervening in the Organically protected debate occurring in any forum functioning as an Organ of the State under the Organic Law.

To wit, the Organic Law mandates that, "administer[] a public venue for the inspection of legislative proposals before they become bills, 'The Hopper'" (Org.L.IX1). Accordingly, the official legislative forum known as the “Ziu,” operated on the internet-based forum known as “Wittenberg” functions as the only means by which legislators may engage in speech and debate regarding proposed or voted upon legislation. Apropos of the foregoing, the only means by which petitioner may seek judicial redress is by accessing the aforementioned forum.

Further, the First Covenant enumerates that "(n)o law shall exist abridging the freedom of thought, belief, opinion(,) and expression, including ... other media of communication(.) Censorship shall never exist in Talossa, every person may freely speak, write(,) and publish his (or her) sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the libelous abuse of that right" (Org.L.IX.I).

It is well-settled law across common-law States, as well as civil-law States, that Parliamentarians enjoy certain parliamentary immunity, which, among other things, bars State action against all speech made during debate in the State's Legislature (see e.g. German Constitution Art. 46 ["At no time may a Member be subjected to court proceedings or disciplinary action or otherwise called to account outside of the Bundestag for a vote case or for any speech or debate in the Bundestag or in any of its committees(.)"); United Kingdom Parliamentary Privilege, 1689 Bill of Rights, R v Chaytor, CTB v News GRoup Newspapers Ltd, (2011) EWHC 1232 QB; U.S. Const. art. I, § 6, clause 1 ("(F)or any or Debate in either House (of Congress), (the Congressperson) shall not be questioned"; Franch Constitution, article 26).

Whereas, in a LAWFUL debate on the Hopper or in the Ziu, petitioner engaged in parliamentary debate with another member of the Ziu pursuant to the rights protected under the Organic Law, and pursuant to long-established legal doctrines the world over. King John has taken inorganic and extraordinary measure by suspending my account based on that debate. The protections to engage in speech and debate in the only forum afforded to legislators contemplate not the nature, civility, or type of speech and debate, nor can it in a developed parliament that is protected under the rule of law. King John has engaged in censorship based on speech and debate that he finds offensive irrespective of different cultures or approaches to same, thereby imposing his individual beliefs on a coequal branch of government. To put it another way, King John attempts to breach the separation of powers enshrined in our Organic Law.

Further, King John’s proposed “24-hour” or “48-hour” cooling-off is inexcusable as it seeks merely to silence those who oppose this tyrannical approach. Merely withdrawing suspension will not undo the harm suffered by petitioner and would not resolve the serious nature of the Organic issue presented herein. Petitioner filed a similar petition in September 2018 regarding the exact same issue (see talossa.proboards.com/thread/12963/petition-emergency-injunction-matter?page=1&scrollTo=160038). Hence, this issue is likely to repeat based on King John’s actions and the actions of the Secretary of State in September 2018. These are merely misguided understandings that they hold some type of authority to silence opposing opinion. Moreover, the Organic issue presented herein is likely to evade judicial scrutiny because the offenders can simply unsuspend the account prior to the Cort having an opportunity to address the issue.

It is also pointed out that any perceived “uncouth” or “uncivilized” speech and debate occurred solely within the confines of the Hopper and Ziu. King John simply has no authority, and in fact is in direct violation of the Organic Law, by suspending my account for engaging in protected speech. Also of note, King John has directly impeded petitioner’s ability to seek direct redress of the Cort by denying him access to Wittenberg, requiring petitioner to file this petition through a third-party.

Petitioner also requests that the Hon. Dame Litz Cjantscheir be recused from hearing this matter on account of prior public statements that she has made speaking directly to the merits of this issue. Petitioner does not question the Hon. Cjantscheir’s ability to be impartial, but only that her prior comments impede petitioner’s right to a fair and impartial hearing on the subject matter.

Therefore, I request that this Cort enjoin King John from suspending my Wittenberg account so that I may resume engaging in speech and debate. Further, I demand that this Cort award monetary damage for King John’s gross violation of my Organic rights, and for other such equitable remedies this Cort may deem appropriate.

Respectfully,

_____/s/________
Viteu Marcianüs
Petitioner

Attachments:

In the Matter of.docx (21.09 KB)

[Dame Litz Cjantscheir, UrN]

In line with the petitioner's wishes, I will recuse myself from the hearing of this petition.

I have forwarded this petition to the other Justices of this Cort - hopefully one will be along soon.

-- Dame Litz Cjantscheir, UrN

[Munditenens Tresplet]

The petitioner has requested I post the following.

Respectfully,
M. Tresplet
--------------------------

In light of the limited availability of the Justices of this august Cort and the emergent circumstance and need for immediate redress, petitioner would preserve his objection to the Hon. Dame Litz Cjantscheir deciding the substantive Organic issue for that reason previously asserted, but would not object to the Hon. Cjantscheir deciding the issue of the temporary restraining order while referring the substantive issue to another Justice to be decided in due time.

Respectfully,

_____/s/________
Viteu Marcianüs
Petitioner

[Dame Litz Cjantscheir, UrN]

Feb 22, 2019 16:15:54 GMT -6 Munditenens Tresplet said:

The petitioner has requested I post the following update.

Respectfully,
M. Tresplet
--------------------------

In light of the limited availability of the Justices of this august Cort and the emergent circumstance and need for immediate redress, petitioner would preserve his objection to the Hon. Dame Litz Cjantscheir deciding the substantive Organic issue for that reason previously asserted, but would not object to the Hon. Cjantscheir deciding the issue of the temporary restraining order while referring the substantive issue to another Justice to be decided in due time.

Respectfully,

_____/s/________
Viteu Marcianüs
Petitioner

Order!

With respect to my decision to voluntarily recuse myself from hearing this petition, largely on medical grounds, but also to respect the petitioner's wishes. However, in light of the above and to allow Viteu Marcianüs to represent himself before this Cort. I hereby make the following order:

The Cort hereby orders, enjoins and instructs King John and/or any Witt admin with powers to do so, who sees this order, to remove any and all suspensions from the Witt account of the petitioner, Viteu Marcianüs

Furthermore, the Cort hereby orders, enjoins and instructs Viteu Marcianüs that he may only post on the Cortroom Board and the Ziu Board and/or on boards which this Cort expressly permits in further rulings. The petitioner is prohibited from posting elsewhere, bar the Cortroom and Ziu.  

This order shall remain in force for 48 hours (whereupon it will be reviewed by myself) or until this matter is heard and ruled on by a Justice of this Cort.


So ordered,  

-- Dame Litz Cjantscheir, UrN

[Owen Edwards]

I have signalled to my fellow Justices that I am able to sit the case and render any substantive judgement.

FOLLOW-UP: I affirm Justice Cjantscheir's temporary order - this procedure of course has precedence, as per Woolley vs Martuc. There is a difference in standing between Martuc (defendant) and Marcianus (plaintiff), and an argument might be made that the right to face one's accuser and defend oneself is superior to the right to make a complaint, but the principle being applied in each case is the same - that is, access to recourse under the law.

[Munditenens Tresplet]

The petitioner has requested I post the following.

Respectfully,
M. Tresplet
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Your Honours,

King John has not restored petitioner's account, and it appears as if other admins do not have this authority. Petitioner intends to strictly comply with the Cort's temporary order in all respects. With leave of the Cort, if petitioner's account is not restored by 10:00 p.m. Talossan time tonight, petitioner respectfully requests permission to create a temporary second account for use solely as directed by the Cort. It is petitioner's understanding that other admins may approve accounts. In addition, petitioner requests guidance as to whether the prior order also applies to the Hopper.

Petitioner thanks the Cort for its patience and prompt response in this matter.

_____/s/________
Viteu Marcianüs
Petitioner

[Owen Edwards]

The Cort hereby grants said permission, and has informed the King to avoid any misunderstanding. The prior order does not apply to the Hopper - the Cort takes part of the dispute to be about the nature of the Hopper, as the petitioner would probably agree.

[Viteu Marcianüs]

Your Honour,

Petitioner appreciates the Cort's prompt response in the matter.

To clarify-the alleged offending remarks occured in the Ziu and the Hopper. Therefore, both are the subject of this Petition.

Petitioner will abide by the Cort's instruction, but he would note that he is currently precluded from campaigning for Senate, campaigning for his party, or engaging in his role as Distain, all without due process and by monarchical fiat. 

The right to free speech is at the bedrock of the Covenants of Freedoms; there exist no right to "civility" that is protected. Hence, there are no rights to be weighed.

At this moment, another Talossan is libeling petitoner by publicly accusing petitioner of doxxing him (petitioner only shared information that was already on Witt), knowing that petitioner has no way to defend himself. Petitioner should be accorded the full relief requested-unfettered access to Witt. It cannot stand to reason that the King can punish petitioner without any due process for speech and debate expressed in the Ziu by blocking him from the entirety of Witt.

Petitioner also requests a briefing schedule.

Respectfully,

_____/s/________
Viteu Marcianüs
Petitioner

[King John]

Your Honour,

It appears that S:reu Marcianüs's account remained blocked for only 11 hours or so.

My intention in blocking his account, for what it's worth, wasn't to *punish* him but to *prevent* his continuing to violate the very prominently posted "Wittiquette" guidelines. *Someone* needs to maintain something like order around here.

With deepest respect,

— John R

[Viteu Marcianüs]

Hon. Owen Edwards , 

Contrary to what King John claims, it is not his role to enforce his made-up rules. 

Although King John privately owns Wittenberg, the reality is that he does so with the understanding that it functions as an organ of the State.  He ability to suspend accounts means that he is acting under color of law and as an organ of the State. If he does not want people to engage in certain behavior on his property, then he can only enforce that by informing the State that he will no longer permit it to conduct its business on his property.  It will then be up to the State to seek to obtain the property or establish its own forum to provide Talossans with a common meeting place and for State function.  But King John cannot argue that he gets to set rules that are blatantly inOrganic, or seek to impose inOrganic punishments, such as expulsion, based on his own subjective rules when State officials engage in State activity. He chooses to allow Talossa to use his property to function; in so doing, he relinquished the ability to regulate what happens on his property.

Nevertheless, this Cort's order remains in effect and I am now on the fifth day of not being able to fully engage in debate.  There is legislation in the Hopper that I would like to discuss; there are posts in the Vuode subforum that directly ask for me to engage; there are post in the main Wittenberg where I have been utterly libeled and to which I can not adequately defend myself. 

I request that this Cort immediately grant an Order fully restoring my account and ability to post on the entirety of Wittenberg. 



Respectfully,



_____/s/________

Viteu Marcianüs

Petitioner

[Owen Edwards]

I have asked the complainee (out of Cort, as per the precedent for the Cort's duties in communicating proceedings) whether he intends to dispute the Organic claims being made by the complainant in this case, and will produce a schedule on the basis of his response. I will also make an interim judgement on the question of full restoration of Cxhn Marcianus' posting privileges based on that schedule, as it does seem an onerous burden to restrict his ability to debate matters in parliamentary fora for an indefinite period, at least so long as the nature of Witt's public and private natures is under serious dispute. Any interim restoration would need to avoid an effective judgement in favour of one party or the other - that is to say, would need to leave everyone equally unhappy.

[Owen Edwards]

The Cort hereby removes all strictures on the complainant posting, though notes that at this point the pre-existing conditions (Wittiquette being enforced by Witt's owner, including its provision of account-locks for serious breaches) are still in place. I have asked the complainee to post a submission in reply (he has indicated the middle of next week as a likely time) after which - unless there be a need for further submissions - the Cort can proceed to opinion and judgement on the complainant's other suggested recourse.

[King John]

Your Honour,

The Petitioner makes a number of assertions, and three requests. He requests that Dame Litz Cjantscheir be recused from this matter; on that point I have nothing to say. He requests that I be enjoined from suspending his Wittenberg account; and further that he be awarded monetary damages for my “gross violation” of his Organic rights.

1. First, as to the suspension. I wrote (and since 2008 have prominently displayed) the “Wittiquette” posting, outlining rather simple rules for (among other things) not having your account suspended. The petitioner has persistently violated several of those rules; notably, that against postings “perceived as being abusive, insulting, or rude”, the instruction “Nor, except rarely and for limited rhetorical purposes, will obscenity be permitted”, and (most importantly perhaps) the rule requiring the use of Talossan names for people who prefer to use them.

Wittenberg, as everyone seems to know and acknowledge, is my property. (Wittiquette isn’t exactly the same as a “Terms of Use” notice on a web page, but it serves a similar purpose, and nobody can be ignorant — certainly the Petitioner isn’t ignorant — of my ongoing assertion of the rights of ownership and administration over Wittenberg.) The Cort has no more authority to command me to use my power as Witt Admin in some particular way, than it has to order me to hang a particular picture on my bedroom wall. The fact that other people find Wittenberg a valuable resource for conducting Talossan business and conversation, in no way gives them some kind of ownership or control of it. The situation is analogous to a guy who allows a group of people to use his basement as a place to play games, listen to music, and so on, on the condition that they obey his posted house rules. Someone who violates those rules, and gets kicked out, has no recourse to the Justice system.

Nor does the Cort have competence to decide whether some particular act violates the rules as stated. I try my best, in administering Witt as in other things, to do what’s best for Talossa; and I have invariably — voluntarily — deferred to the opinions of the Justices in my Administration of Witt.

I force nobody to use Wittenberg. A Witt account is certainly useful for interacting with other Talossans, but not essential, and certainly not equivalent to being a citizen. (The petitioner, strangely, seems to assert in his repeated accusations here and there that I “expelled him” from Talossa, as if I had some unilateral power over citizenship.) Wittenberg is not Talossa. Wittenberg is a private forum regularly used by Talossans and various organizations within Talossa.

It is irrelevant to my actions as owner and Admin of Witt, whether the Wittiquette violations took place in the course of parliamentary debate. I assert no Organic authority whatsoever to regulate (still less to punish) parliamentary speech. I do assert the authority inherent in the entire concept of ownership to regulate the use of Wittenberg, especially as I’ve so very prominently declared the kinds of things that are likely to get your account suspended. The petitioner remains free to say whatever he wants to; but I have no obligation to provide him a platform for doing so. I don’t have to lend him my cell phone, either; and if I decline to do so, that isn’t censorship, even if he wants to borrow it to discuss parliamentary business.


2. As to monetary damages, the idea is simply absurd. The notion that someone’s inability for a few hours to post on a social media platform makes the owner of the platform liable for monetary damages is ludicrous. If I post something on Facebook that Mark Zuckerberg (or his algorithms) doesn’t like, and my account is disabled, I can gripe and moan and cry, but what I can’t do is get the Court system to order Facebook to give me money.

I have never suspended a Witt account for expression of opinions I disagreed with; the petitioner’s assertions to the contrary are fluff and nonsense. To the best of my recall, I have suspended citizens’ Witt acccounts a grand total of five times — once for repeated nasty racism (after warnings), once for a huge spamming attack on email accounts and the hijacking of a citizen’s Witt account, once (for a day) for repeated obscenity, once (for less than a day) for repeated obscenity and the frequent use of someone’s legal name who had asked not to have it used, and once to preserve the evidence that a large number of accounts were sock puppets. That’s it. I have hardly been the heavy-handed censor the petitioner evokes.

And as to the petitioner’s assertion that he has “Organic rights” that were violated by his account being suspended, that’s also absurd. The Organic Law never mentions Wittenberg or its administration or its ownership.

3. I would point out, by the way, that the very title of the Petition is misleading, or perhaps just wrong. I am identified as “HIS MAJEST[Y] REGEU IAN, as MONARCH OF TALOSSA, and INDIVIDUALLY, RESPONDENT.” But the King, as King, has no particular legal relationship to Wittenberg. The actions about which the petitioner exercises himself were taken by me not “as Monarch of Talossa”, but simply as the individual owner of a Proboards forum. Nor could my actions reasonably be construed as “State action” (quoting the Petition); all that gas about parliamentary privilege in Germany, the United States, France, etc., is entirely off the point. Again, the Petitioner can, for all I care, say anything he wants to. But I am under no obligation to provide him the means to say it.

I have been Witt Admin for 12 years. In that time, I have never used the Admin powers for partisan ends, or to suppress opinions with which I disagreed. I’ve made the entire platform, with very rare and very limited exceptions, available for whatever anyone wanted to do with it. I’ve never censored any opinion expressed — even abuse and harsh language directed at me personally. Why not? Because I have always believed that to limit the use of Wittenberg that way would injure Talossa, and my overarching concern in all this is the good of the nation.

Respectfully,

— John Regeu

[Viteu Marcianüs]

Point of procedure- traditionally the petitioner/complainant gets to reply to the respondent's/complainee's opposition filing. Am I permitted to do so? If so, I can provide my reply to respondent's opposition by Sunday.