► Columbus Dispatch - 02/05/10 - Will watchdog’s words bite him? Print

By James Nash – Columbus Dispatch Statehouse Reporter
 
Will watchdog's words bite him?
 
He's referred to Ohio Supreme Court justices as judicial prostitutes, ethical hobbits and intellectually insolvent.
 
Now, David Palmer has a case in front of the very same justices he's spent years criticizing, sometimes in very personal terms.
 
Palmer, a self-styled judicial watchdog who moved from Ohio to California, finds himself in the awkward position of seeking justice from the same black-robed judges he's attacked since the 1990s.
 
Palmer is asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on a piece of his legal dispute with a suburban Toledo lawyer that began in the mid-1990s. The lawyer, David Pheils, successfully sued Palmer for defamation after Palmer leafletted his office and mailbox with fliers bearing statements such as "KING OF SLEAZE."
 
Pheils had represented Palmer and his wife, OK Sun Palmer, in a lawsuit arising from a serious car accident that Palmer's wife experienced. The Palmers fired Pheils after a colleague in his law firm improperly drew checks from Mrs. Palmer's bank account.
 
The case now before the Supreme Court deals with a small aspect of the case. The Palmers are contesting videotaped evidence showing that Mrs. Palmer apparently was in good enough physical condition to help her husband post the fliers.
 
Still, Palmer says most of the Supreme Court justices shouldn't have anything to do with the case because of the "ongoing animus, hatred and/or outright contempt" that the two sides hold for each other.
 
He's requesting that Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer ("intellectually insolvent") and Justices Evelyn Lundberg Stratton ("ethical hobbit"), Judith Ann Lanzinger ("ethical gremlin") and Maureen O'Connor ("tax scofflaw") step aside from the case.
 
So far, Moyer, O'Connor and Justice Terrence O'Donnell have done so.