► Columbus Monthly Magazine – May 2002 – The transformation of David Palmer Print E-mail

Columbus Monthly Magazine – May 2002 – The transformation of David Palmer

By Dave Ghose
 
David Palmer is a happy guy. Once a lonely voice in the wilderness, he now has a core group of devoted followers. Once a bitter legal loser, he now finds himself in the winner's circle. "My intent is to make the system accessible to everybody regardless of who they are," says Palmer, sitting in his makeshift basement law library in his far north-side home, "and to make every law in these books behind me apply.”
 
     Palmer, the sole member of the Committee to Expose Dishonest and Incompetent Attorneys and Judges is on a roll. In late December, he beat a complaint that alleged he had been impersonating an attorney. In March, Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, a frequent foe, changed how the state pays for visiting judges after Palmer complained about the old system for years.
 
     Brash, rude and relentless, Palmer, 57, has transformed himself from an obscure Toledo grocer to Ohio's self-proclaimed legal watchdog. To do so, he's walked the fine line between being a courageous reformer and an intimidating menace. His supporters liken him to a brave knight, while his enemies call him a stalker. "Mr. Palmer is no heroic whistle-blower," say Richard McQuade, one of nine visiting judges named in felony theft-in-office complaints filed in Franklin County Municipal Court last year. "This is simply a vendetta."
 
     Palmer, whose actions have gotten plenty of press attention, including the Wall Street Journal, doesn't deny his campaign is personal. He devoted himself full time to investigating what he considers legal and judicial corruption after he and his wife Ok Sun Palmer, lost their home and most of a $1.4 million insurance settlement in a bitter legal feud with their former attorneys. His story begins with a 1987 car crash that nearly killed Ok Sun. The head-on collision with a dump truck shattered her knees, cracked several ribs, tore her pancreas and left her on life-support for several days. Her condition has improved considerably since then, but she continues to struggle to walk and stand. "I don't think you go on a crusade if you didn't have something that happened to you or somebody close to you," he says.
 
     Before the crash, the Palmers lived an upper-middle class life in Maumee, a suburb of Toledo. They owned a four-bed-room $220,000 home and sent their three daughters to a prestigious all-girls Catholic school in Toledo. He and his wife, whom he met while serving in the US Army in Korea, opened the first Asian grocery store in Toledo and then got financially involved in Chinese restaurants in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and other parts of Ohio. "He was a very quiet man the whole time I grew up," says Angela Kemp, 38, his oldest daughter. "He wouldn't say boo to anybody…We always say this is a very different Dad than we've ever known."
 
     Indeed, Palmer's persistence is legendary today. In his feud with his former attorneys, he battled them in three county courts and in U.S. District Court in Toledo. He haunted law libraries in Ohio, Michigan and California (where two of his daughters live) and represented himself in court despite no formal legal training other than a 12-week court-reporting course he took while in the military. "The guy has more staying power and tenacity than anybody I have ever met," says Dennis Caron, a friend in Powell who has waged his own public battles against judges stemming from a long child-custody case.
 
     Palmer's former lawyers sued him and his wife for attorney fees after the couple fired them in 1988 when they alleged the lawyers stole money from a bank account established to collect Ok Sun Palmer's medical benefits. The Palmers could have settled the legal dispute for $16,000 at one point, but passed on the offer because they were convinced that the courts would rule in their favor. They were wrong. The courts ordered the Palmers to pay between $600,000 and $900,000 to their former attorneys. Today, Palmer says he supports himself and his wife, who declared bankruptcy in 1998, with Army disability checks; for financial reasons, they moved to Columbus and live in a home owned by their oldest daughter. "I tried to use the system, but the system was no good," he says.
 
     The string of losses turned him into an angry crusader. He sued Moyer, Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery and the Toledo Bar Association, claiming they condoned legal wrongdoing. He filed dozens of grievances with bar associations and the state, accusing lawyers and judges involved in his cases with unethical behavior. And in October 1999, Palmer wrote an angry, profane letter to Moyer, one that Palmer now says he regrets. In it, he called Moyer a "coward," a "bigot," a "scumbag" and a "piece of garbage" and warned him "the day will come when all of you will pay dearly for your misdeeds, and the repeated victimization of my wife." Moyer didn't respond to a request to be interviewed for this story.
 
     Palmer also faced three misdemeanor charges in connection with his ongoing battles with his former attorneys. He was charged with stalking one attorney in Perrysburg, keying another's attorney's car in Delaware and making a menacing threat to a third attorney in downtown Toledo. Palmer denied the accusations, and all the charges eventually were dismissed.
 
     But Palmer gained his true notoriety with the birth of his website, amoralethics.com and through his use of fliers. On the web page, which a California judge shut down after a lawyer featured on the site filed a lawsuit, Palmer would accuse his enemies of racism, adultery, alcoholism and other nasty things. He made the same claims in fliers that he posted in neighborhoods, churches and business districts.
 
     In one notorious example, Palmer attacked Dimon McFerson, then-chief executive office of Nationwide Insurance, in the late 1980s. While seeking that $1.4 million insurance settlement from Nationwide in connection with his wife's car crash, Palmer accused McFerson of condoning racism towards Asians. Palmer posted fliers at Nationwide's downtown Columbus headquarters and in McFerson's Delaware County neighborhood. (Palmer says he heard secondhand that a Nationwide lawyer allegedly had used a racial slur when speaking of his wife.)
 
     Palmer's daughter Angela even got involved. At the time, Angela's children attended the same Delaware County School as McFerson's kids and Angela raised a stink at a parents' meeting they both attended, according to Palmer. Shortly after the confrontation, Palmers say the company agreed to the settlement. Nationwide officials didn't respond to a phone call seeking comment.
 
     Such tactics make many attorneys and court officials reluctant to talk publicly about Palmer. "The benefit for me is, I say something to piss him off and I'm the next guy in his scope for no reason," says one lawyer.
 
     But even Palmers' critics acknowledge his intelligence and skill. "As far as being able to use the system, and to work it, he's better than 99 percent of the attorneys I know in just being able to practice as an attorney." Adds another lawyer: "He's a bright guy. Do not underestimate him."
 
     On a late February afternoon, Palmer sits in his Spartan basement office near a humming furnace and a laundry pile. He wears a light-green sweater, faded blue jeans and well-worn black sneakers. He talks fast and furiously. The only time he stops is to pour coffee down this throat. (He says he goes through two pots a day.)
 
     Palmer says only corrupt lawyers and judges should fear him and that his critics don't appreciate his humor. He loves irreverent cartoons and sarcastic one-liners, and he ridicules legal pretensions whenever given the chance. On a letterhead that he has used in the past, he claims to offer a variety of legal services and "light hauling and landscaping." He once conducted a survey on his website asking visitors to voter for their favorite corrupt judge. "I figured I'll kill you by making a fool out of you," he says.
 
     Two desktop computers, a fax machine and stacks of books and documents surround him in his office. Palmer uses one computer for writing and the other to scan the Internet and exchange e-mails. He estimates he receives 15 to 20 e-mails per day. Before his website was shut down, the total was up to 100 per day.  Many of those e-mails are from people seeking free legal advice--one reason the Ohio Office of Disciplinary Counsel accused him of impersonating an attorney. Palmer countered that he was just offering common-sense advice; the state's disciplinary board agreed and threw out the complaint.
 
     More than 25,000 pages of public records also cram his office. The documents cover the concrete floor and fill six bookshelves and several boxes. At first, Palmer dug into financial records of visiting judges assigned to his cases. Then he widened his prove to all 174 eligible visiting judges, who fill in for elected judges when there are conflicts of interest, emergencies and crowded dockets. After years of Palmer's making public-record requests, the Ohio Supreme Court now sends him copies of every financial record related to visiting judges. "It's almost like having two systems," says a court administrator with a sigh. And if Palmer ever achieves his goal of more than 50,000 pages of judicial expense records, his office may have to expand to a new floor. 
 
     In May 2001, Palmer's investigation led him to file 57 felony theft charges against nine visiting judges. The complaints didn't result in any convictions, but they did focus more scrutiny on irregularities in visiting-judge pay. Ohio's six largest newspapers wrote about Palmer's complaints, and overpaid judges returned more than $8,000. In March, Moyer quietly adopted new guidelines that require visiting judges to bill by the hour instead of charging a full day's work no matter how little they do. Palmer had been complaining about the loophole since 1997.
 
     Doug Stephens, director of judicial and court services for the Supreme Court, acknowledges that Palmer helped bring about the changes, but adds that Palmer is just one reason for the new guidelines. He says the court was overdue for a change and tough fiscal times are forcing belt-tightening at the Supreme Court and other state agencies as well. Palmer doesn't buy it. "They are full of it," he says. "It never came out until I brought it out, so who are they kidding."
 
     Larry Brown, a Hilliard resident, says Palmer is uniting like-minded people with bad legal experiences. Brown contacted Palmer after reading about him in a newspaper story. He now helps Palmer collect documents and run errands. He also supported Palmer during the August 2001 hearing in which Palmer defended himself against the impersonating-an-attorney complaint. Brown met with about two dozen other supporters at the hearing, many of whom he now keeps in touch with. "He brought to my attention that I'm not just one guy," Brown says.
 
     In his latest venture, Palmer has returned to the World Wide Web. In late March, he and Toledo resident Bill Murray launched a new website-the-exposer.com. Palmer sees the site as a Drudge Report-style gossip sheet that will focus on attorneys and judges. And if another lawyer wants to try to shut it down, Palmer is itching for a fight. "I'm not fearful of these people," he says.
 
     Angela Kemp admits that her father's never-ending campaign can be frustrating. She says legal corruption consumes 90 percent of her family's conversations, and even her two teenage sons are well versed in the legal system now. "I don't think he's going to stop," she says. "This is something that has affected him. He doesn't want to see it happen to anybody else."

 

 

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