Washington Supreme Court - Council House, Seattle - Summary
National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) formed a non-profit corporation then built and later refurbished Council House, 1501 17th Avenue, Seattle, Washington. The corporation rents independent-living apartments to senior citizens. The building does not classify as a nursing home and does not house vulnerable adults. [Vulnerable Adults]
Vulnerability rules do not generally apply to Council House tenants although administrators and their lawyers would have the public believe that they do. The people who legally live there possess all their faculties and have the ability to act independently.
Tenants rent apartments in a block governed by landlord/tenant laws. The difference between Council House tenant and other landlord/tenant relationships lies only in economic disadvantage and age eligibility not physical or mental disability. [Elder Abuse - Introduction]
NCJW obtained federal financial assistance through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the original construction and rehabilitation. Residents have amortized mortgages by paying rent over several decades while HUD continued to subsidize some rents and services.
NCJW appointed directors who in turn employed administrators mandated to comply with HUD directives. Instead, successive administrators have introduced supremacist policies and enforced them contrary to federal law. They have also obtained restraining orders that banned communication with the directors so that they would not hear about the abuse perpetrated in their name.
Lynn, wife of Judge Anthony P. Wartnik, and Sheila, wife of Seattle attorney Craig S. Sternberg (formerly co-presidents and both Council House directors) will eventually have to accept full responsibility for employing Stephen A. Mitchell an unqualified, out-of-work actor as administrator who in turn employed another actor as service coordinator. Successive presidents have continued the policies introduced by Lynn and Sheila which Mitchell has aggressively enforced for more than five years.
Lynn and Sheila knowingly filed a false federal document - with full knowledge of Mitchell’s lack of qualifications - in order to gain HUD employment ratification for him. Mitchell, a pathological liar with fake credentials has proved himself a paranoid sociopath. Instead of managing the building as landlord’s representative he insists upon tyrannically managing the lifestyles of its tenants.
The directors will eventually have to assume joint and several liability for his malfeasance as well as pay for their own culpability and criminal activity in trying to cover up elder abuse. They perjured themselves and suborned tenants to try to stop a journalist reporting their crimes and jailed him without due process of law on perjured testimony.
Mitchell must eventually go to jail for his criminal acts which include multiple perjury, subornation, and witness tampering. He has: caused the unlawful incarceration of at least four elderly people; complicity in death by negligence of at least two other senior citizens; and, effected several racially motivated evictions using “zero-tolerance” policies. Ironically, he has now introduced “sensitivity” training for his staff some of whom he has terrorized.
The reporter spent over a year investigating abuse of residents by administrators then published and reported it to government authorities. In retaliation, the administrator (and several members of an elite acting in his behalf) intentionally and systematically disparaged and harassed him by publishing libel and defamatory statements.
Trial court orders permanently bar the reporter from ever returning to his home at Council House, an independent living facility with about 200 residents, many of them his friends and acquaintances. Impetus for the draconian order came from his protected writings in a newsletter.
Those writings, critical of the administration of Council House, caused the administrator and directors to seek and obtain the original anti-harassment order. Trial court, on motions brought by Council House, later entered several contempt orders against him for continuing to write essays that identified perpetrators of abuse.
All the contempt motions based upon alleged violations of the original flawed and unconstitutional anti-harassment order. The court then jailed the reporter for 111 days (including 25 days in solitary confinement) and denied him the right to counsel.
Trial court had absolutely no justification to deny the right to counsel. In denying that right, the court did not consider the draconian nature of the order it entered against the reporter - prior restraint, constructive eviction from his home, and eventual jail time.
Trial courts must not interfere with a litigant's right to legal representation. Yet, trial court denied a reasonable continuance to allow time for counsel to prepare his case and appear. This denial occurred after the attorney had agreed to represent the reporter and indicated that he could not attend court that day.
The directors (landlords), and two successive administrators, have consistently neglected to comply with HUD directives over a fifteen-year period. They deny tenants their civil rights and due process of law while using an aggressive administrative staff and violent enforcers to silence dissenters. The directors have a backstage connection with several Washington Superior Court judges that allows them to continue to violate both federal and state laws with impunity.[Impunity]
Trial court misused antiharassment laws to claim that news gathering constitutes "surveillance" and reporting news defines as "harassment". The court order effectively denied the constitutional rights of an author who has held an international press card for many years.
The court deliberately interrupted the flow of public information and interfered with ethical reporting procedures designed to observe and report upon government dereliction. HUD and City of Seattle officials have colluded with Council House directors and administrators by following laissez faire policies and have neglected to address myriad complaints and requests for help from residents. They have neglected to oversee the managers of a government financially-assisted building and withheld public records to hinder investigations of elder abuse.
The court decisions advantaged a group of wealthy people who abused senior citizens and misappropriated federal funds by censoring public information. Moreover, the property houses US congressman Jim McDermott’s mother who swore a false or misleading declaration. This probably made the issue politically sensitive for a recently elected judge and Seattle bureaucrats.
The censored information formed part of the public record. Secretary of State, State of Washington, requires nonprofit corporations to file an annual report containing names and addresses of officers and directors. However, Council House directors, administrators, and attorneys, neither comply with this law nor do they comply with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) rules that require full disclosure.
Without any rational legal interpretation, trial court retroactively ordered the publisher to remove other information (published more than a year before). He reviewed published material on the Internet then claimed that the author kept people "under surveillance" by using public records and attending a court hearing to report a case. Bizarrely, he wants all named journalistic sources to sign waivers. That court order effectively denies use of any information contained in public records available generally under RCW 42.17 (Washington Public Disclosure Act).
Trial court, issued two anti-harassment orders also contempt citations to censor this web site by prior restraint at the behest of Council House directors and their administrator. Using their financial power, the directors obtained SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) court orders and contempt citations using perjured testimony against this author. They then had him jailed including solitary confinement.
SLAPP consists of frivolous charges designed to bankrupt an opponent and support prior restraint. The landlords have used this tactic on several occasions to try to cover up issues that affect all their tenants. [Prior Restraint]
The trial court judge thwarted an appeal of his findings for more than three years by withholding court documents and other machination. The author/publisher claims judicial bias and arbitrary censorship that deny him his rights under the First Amendment to the US Constitution, Washington State Constitution, and United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
Throughout the three years waiting for an appeal, the author remained dubious about receiving a fair, unbiased, appellate opinion due to previous machination by that court and Becker's political aspirations. Court of Appeals did not disappoint him.
Trial court challenged a principle journalism ethic - seek truth and report it - by denying a reporter’s First Amendment rights. The judge knowingly wrote biased decisions based on perjury without due process of law then denied a right to refutation.
Those findings enabled Council House directors to cover up homicide by abuse. Homicide ranks as a class A felony punishable by a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in a state correctional institution or by a fine of fifty thousand dollars or both. Both the victim’s family and a Council House administrator benefitted financially by allegedly defrauding both federal and state agencies prior to the tenant’s death. Both trial and appellate courts have effectively thwarted investigation of homicide by their decisions.
[Elder Abuse] [Homicide by Abuse]
Washington Supreme Court (2002) forced Council House to address the real issues by answering four appeals pending before Washington Court of Appeals and instructed CoA to hear the case. Instead of following Supreme Court instructions, CoA conducted another politically motivated, biased, kangaroo court and wrote an opinion that affirmed previous disingenuousness.
[Supreme Court Decision #1]
The author temporarily deleted information from essays, or used pseudonyms, to comply with a contempt order issued by Judge James A. Doerty, Superior Court of Washington (Trial Court), affirmed by Mary Kay Becker, Washington Court of Appeals (CoA). Washington Supreme Court has reversed those decisions based upon First Amendment issues. The author claimed judicial bias, prior restraint, arbitrary censorship, and denial of human rights.
Washington Supreme Court has allowed the public to know the names of people involved in elder abuse and alleged homicide. That will give an ethical prosecutor the opportunity to consider felony homicide charges against Council House directors and their administrators.
[Supreme Court Decision #2]
