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JUDGE MERITA A. HOPKINS

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Essex Superior Court Judge Merita A. Hopkins is the corrupt judge who dismissed my libel lawsuit against the Valley Patriot.. She is also the latest judge of many to conspire among themselves to deny me justice as a vocal critic of the Massachusetts court system and as a pro se litigant, who has attempted to hold several of her colleagues accountable.

This case was originally assigned to Judge Christine M. Roach, who scheduled a hearing for October 8, 2008 on my motion to dismiss the Valley Patriot's frivolous counterclaim. This hearing was postponed to November 4, 2008 and postponed a second time to December 18, 2008, when it was heard not by Judge Roach, but by Judge Merita A. Hopkins.

Hopkins proved herself to be corrupt by defying the law and the facts of the case to dismiss my lawsuit, forcing me to appeal the case to the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

To be more specific, Hopkins committed fraud to claim that the Valley Patriot had filed a "motion to dismiss" to dismiss a case that she could not dismiss legally without such a motion; she ignored the proven perjury contained in the Valley Patriot's responsive pleadings; and she selectively referenced those excerpts that she thought she could "spin" to justify a dismissal while omitting from her "Memorandum of Decision and Order" the most flagrant examples of libel in the subject article.

According to Hopkins, it was not "libel" for Paula Porten, a family court attorney in the Merrimack Valley, to fraudulently allege under the guise of a male pen name that my book on family court corruption contains "slanderous statements attributed to Judge Manzi, Judge Digangi, the court clerks, the mother, and the mother's lawyer"; nor was it "libel" for Paula Porten to fraudulently claim that my book contains "sensitive and privileged information" about my son.

According to Hopkins, it was not "libel" for someone who has never met me either in or outside of a courtroom to describe me as a disgruntled dad, constantly angry, disrespectful of the court's procedural rules, and incompetent at representing myself in court.

According to Hopkins, it was not "libel" for the owner of the Valley Patriot, Tom Duggan, to deflect the blame from his "writer-attorney-girlfriend" by slandering me himself in emails to critics of Porten's article with the fraudulent claim that I have children from a previous marriage who I barely acknowledge.

And according to Hopkins, it was not "perjury" for Paula Porten (and Tom Duggan) to deny that Porten wrote the article for two years, including a written denial of this fact to the court, before admitting in an affidavit, signed under the pains and penalties of perjury, that she had in fact written the article and that her "sources" for the article included documents, which did not exist at the time that she wrote it!

This judge added insult on top of injury by rewarding the Valley Patriot for its fraud on the court and bad faith litigation with an order allowing them to recover their legal costs.

Judges are the weakest link in our system of justice, and they are also the most protected.