LYNCHED BY COURT ORDER
HOW TO STEAL MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
BY TURNING
PUBLIC COURTROOMS INTO A PRIVATE PLAYGROUND
Author: Mac Koch-Lebel
In Essex County, Massachusetts, a group of lawyers supported by
several state and federal judges, after having stolen over $800,000
using invalid court orders, is now ready to liquidate and distribute
among themselves the rest of the estate of 87-year-old Mary Jane
Chalupowski, still worth about $1,500,000.
When a Lawsuit is a Crime
Except for the affected few, almost no one in this
country would ever believe that each year, millions of dollars change
hands (are stolen to be exact) in staged litigation schemes devised
with the sole purpose of generating fraudulent bills for alleged
attorney’s fees.
In the process of such schemes, various unsuspecting, law-obeying
citizens are being pulled into a vortex of unnecessary litigation,
disguised as legitimate court proceedings.
The result is financial and emotional devastation, comparable only to
lynching, if we think of lynching not as the sudden outburst of
irrational group hatred, but as the “cool, calculating deliberation of
intelligent people,” as defined by Ida Wells-Barnett in 1900.
With violence and corruption widely accepted as an essential part of
the American lifestyle and culture, this new, refined version of
common robbery goes largely unpunished, as did lynching for decades.
The instances of formal prosecution of predatory lawyers who use
staged litigation schemes to make their living are few and far in
between.
In early 2003, the attorney general of California, alerted by
politicians, filed a civil lawsuit against a group of shakedown
lawyers who had been harassing local small businesses by fabricating
abusive lawsuits with a sole purpose of ruining the businesses while
generating extortionate attorney’s fees.
In October 2003, three years after more than 60 lawyers and county
employees were arrested on charges of bilking Florida’s Miami-Dade
County out of millions of dollars through fraudulent personal injury
lawsuits, the County filed a civil racketeering (RICO) lawsuit against
the perpetrators found guilty in the criminal proceedings, in order to
recoup over $15 million in losses suffered by the County as a result
of the massive public corruption schemes.
The headline-making cases involving staged litigation schemes in which
their perpetrators go after assets belonging to businesses or local
governments are rare. More typical victims of staged litigation
schemes never make it to the media limelight, simply because there is
nothing sensational about them.
They are unsophisticated, middle-class working people, who, through
effort and everyday prudence, have managed to accumulate some wealth,
but have no power or connections; hence they are unlikely to put up
the costly and risky fight necessary to stop, let alone expose, the
schemes.
The typical victims, vulnerable for one reason or another, targeted by
the perpetrators of the staged litigation schemes, are being forced
into overwhelming, confusing court proceedings through various tricks,
false accusations, or through turning simple courts actions into
complicated legal ordeals.
Why would anybody intentionally fabricate complicated legal
proceedings, and why would the courts allow it to happen?
The reason is simple: money. Less than 10% of all practicing lawyers
have an actual job with a guaranteed paycheck showing up at the end of
every week or month.
The vast majority of lawyers are “self-employed” which means that they
are, in fact, unemployed until they find a client willing to give them
money in exchange for some legal services, the extent of which may
range from defending a traffic ticket to handling commercial deals
worth millions, if not billions, of dollars.
Judges understand the lawyers’ predicament. After all, by and large,
they all used to make their living by standing in front of the bench
before getting behind the bench, where they are guaranteed to get a
paycheck sent by the state or federal government for the rest of their
lives.
“Judges can be counted on to rule in favor of anything that protects
and empowers lawyers,” says the New York federal appeals court Judge
Dennis G. Jacobs, quoted by Adam Liptak in his August 27, 2007, New
York Times sidebar article “With the Bench Cozied up to the Bar, the
Lawyers Can’t Lose.”
They surely can’t. No matter how “cozied up” the Bar and the Bench
are, the law enforcement authorities, even if notified about specific
serious improprieties, are usually reluctant to upset the status quo.
After all, prosecutorial jobs are not tenured, and some day, the
lawyers who are now prosecutors will depend for their livelihood on
the Bar-Bench alliance, deemed both “serious and secret” by Judge
Denis Jacobs in his unusually frank assertion published by The New
York Times.
Judge Jacobs, most likely, is one of the good people of the system. To
be sure, there are lots of them - smart, honest, hardworking lawyers,
judges, court clerks - the ones who respect law and uphold integrity
of legal profession. They function mostly within the normal paradigm
of practice of law, according to which law and the rules of the court
do matter, and parties with their lawyers are on two distinct sides of
a dispute.
The trouble is that within the same legal system there exists, and
spreads like a disease, the abnormal paradigm of practice of law,
according to which anything goes; laws are broken, the rules of the
court are bent and twisted, and the lines of demarcation are blurred
and secretly crossed.
The temptation is great. To err is human. Cynics smile sarcastically.
Good and evil are intertwined to the point of no distinction, and
holding on to the normal paradigm is a heroic effort, which will not
pay the bills, or worse, will get one in trouble. The ‘cozying up’
becomes a matter of professional survival. After all, whoever does it
usually gets away with it.
In isolated cases, judges who cozy up too much with the Bar wind up
behind bars. But this happens once in a blue moon. According to the
Law.com website, only thirteen federal judges have been impeached
during the last two hundred years.
The judicial “poster boys” like Walter Nixon (a Chief Judge of the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi,
impeached and removed from the bench in 1989 for fixing a case for a
friend and lying to the FBI) or Gerald Garson (a probate court judge
in Brooklyn, New York, sentenced to 3-10 years in state prison in May
2007 for fixing cases) represent only the tip of a massive iceberg of
improprieties committed at every level of the judicial pyramid.
In most instances the authorities, when informed about some unusually
close judges-lawyers ties, invariably happened to suffer from sudden
bouts of incurable willful blindness caused by the terrifying
awareness that any inquiry could expose more dirt than they would be
willing to swallow.
*
This is exactly what is going on in the aforementioned notorious
Massachusetts case known to, and misinterpreted by, every lawyer,
judge, court clerk, paralegal, and policeman in Essex County and
beyond. The case is a classic example of the staged litigation scheme
brought to the extreme. It is not a “complicated family dispute,” as
the perpetrators of the scheme like to label it. Although the Essex
County group clearly crossed the line of simple corruption and entered
the realm of purely criminal activities, the local, state, and federal
law enforcement authorities, fully aware of the criminal conduct,
refuse to intervene and laboriously conceal multi-layered conflicts of
interests.
The Scheme
The basis for the Essex County staged litigation scheme was laid down,
quite inconspicuously, over 14 years ago. Between October 1993 and
January 1996, Attorney Joseph P. Corona of Salem, Massachusetts, used
Donna Chalupowski (an unemployed nurse suffering from a paranoid
personality disorder compounded by substance abuse) as his dupe
plaintiff in five frivolous lawsuits and numerous restraining orders
brought against every member of her immediate family: her mother Mary
Jane Chalupowski, her sister Judith Chalupowski-Venuto, and her
brother, Chester Chalupowski.
After losing, voluntarily dismissing or abandoning all five lawsuits
by late 1996, Joseph Corona took a four-year break, and in December
2000, started his game all over again by filing a second batch of
frivolous cases.
Three out of the four new actions were duplicates of the claims
brought earlier and disposed of on their merits back in 1996, and as
such, were barred both by the statute of limitations and the doctrine
of res judicata, a legal doctrine prohibiting re-litigation of matters
previously adjudicated.
When the court dismissed the three cases barred by res judicata, in
December 2001, the game seemed to be over until the moneymaking
opportunity botched by Joseph Corona was spotted by two smarter and
more influential players.
In the early 2002, taking advantage of the fact that Attorney Corona
decided to pursue a frivolous appeal of the proper dismissals of his
frivolous cases, the two new players, Attorney Sharon D. Meyers of
Salem, and Judge Janis M. Berry of the Massachusetts Appeals Court,
devised an elaborate scheme disguised as legitimate court proceedings
and aimed at defrauding the Chalupowski family from all their assets
worth over $2,000,000.
The scheme was played out within the venue of two courts, the Essex
Probate Court in Salem and the Appeals Court in Boston. While Judge
Berry instituted parallel Single Justice appellate proceedings by
issuing orders on a matter that was not in front of her (thus, it was
outside of her jurisdiction), Attorney Meyers kept litigating at the
Probate Court level the cases dismissed in December 2001, as if they
had not been dismissed.
The Probate Court Prong
After the Probate Court dismissed the three cases, and after Corona
filed his notices of appeal in December 2001, the Probate Court lost
jurisdiction over the matters dismissed and pending on appeal.
Since the only pending case was too simple to lend itself to any
manipulation, Meyers and Corona came up with a clever way to
complicate it. They did it by filing with the Probate Court their
various pleadings under four docket numbers: one belonging to the case
still pending before the Probate Court and three belonging to the
cases dismissed in December 2001, and pending on appeal.
The Probate Court Clerks, always eager to accommodate the attorneys,
would make copies of all filings and would put them haphazardly into
one, two, three, or all four bulging files overflowing with papers.
The chaos and confusion created in this way was impenetrable for any
one, especially a non-lawyer, trying to figure out what exactly was
going on in the “notorious” Chalupowski matter.
The confusion and illegality of the situation did not bother the Chief
Justice of the Essex Probate Court, John C. Stevens, III, even when
Chester Chalupowski (carrying the main burden of the litigation
brought by his sister Donna against him, his mother, and his sister
Judith) repeatedly pointed out that the court was handling matters
pending on appeal, thus outside of jurisdiction of the trial court.
Judge Stevens, unwilling to acknowledge the lack of jurisdiction
issue, but apparently tired of the case which he dubbed the “tar
baby,” in November 2003, quite suddenly dumped the four bulging files
overflowing with papers pertaining to the “Chalupowski matter” into
the willing and hefty arms of Judge Peter C. DiGangi, a personal
friend and political protégé of Congressman John F. Tierney.
In 2005, Congressman Tierney, a Democrat representing the 6th District
of Massachusetts, nominated Judge DiGangi for the Angels in Adoption
Award (presented during a Washington, D.C. gala dinner attended by
President Bush) for Judge DiGangi’s “outstanding contribution to the
welfare of children in the United States foster care system and
orphans around the world.”
While it is not entirely clear exactly what Judge DiGangi did for the
“orphans around the world,” a not-so-angelic picture of Judge
DiGangi’s stout persona emerges from the pages of the book written by
Kevin Thompson, a Massachusetts father lynched financially and
emotionally in the process of a child-custody case handled by Judge
DiGangi.
In his 300-page treatise “Exposing the Corruption of the Massachusetts
Family Courts,” Thompson describes Judge DiGangi as “a dangerous
combination of arrogance, ignorance and incompetence,” “a bully”, and
“a disgrace to our system of justice.”
Upon learning about Thompson’s publication, Judge DiGangi promptly
issued an order banning the distribution of the book. The audacious,
though illegal, move was quite in line with the reputation of Judge
DiGangi, who in the lingo of the local legal community is endearingly
called “the Terminator.”
The nickname duly earned because of Judge DiGangi’s tendency to
swiftly terminate (with not much regard for the law or the rules of
the court) lingering probate court cases. Upon such terminations,
large sums of money flow from the unsuspecting litigants (usually numb
from pain and confusion) into the hands of ever-so-grateful attorneys,
for both sides, of course. After all, “with the Bench cozied up with
the Bar, the lawyers can’t lose.”
In the spirit of this principle, upon his arrival into the case, Judge
DiGangi was going to make sure that the lawyers, who so laboriously
had been concocting the “complicated” Chalupowski litigation, would
not lose their opportunity to cash in on their efforts.
Therefore, the scheme flourished for a while under the watchful eye of
Judge DiGangi, who quickly ascertained that in November 2003, the
stunt was not quite ready for termination. At this point of the game,
it was not entirely clear exactly how much money was available for the
heist and later distribution.
The whole hustle was about two Chalupowski family trusts: one holding
real estate (two residential buildings, a four-family and a
three-family located at 26 and 30 Andrew Street in Salem); and the
other one holding about $170,000, professionally managed by Fidelity
Investments.
Since Chester Chalupowski was the trustee of both trusts, the strategy
originally implemented by Attorney Joseph Corona, and since the late
2001, perfected by Attorney Sharon Meyers, was simple: discredit
Chester and isolate him from the rest of the family, i.e., his mother
and his sister Judith.
The first stage (defamation and vilification) was easily accomplished
by bringing false allegations that Chester stole funds from both
trusts. The fact that the false claims were in direct conflict with
the certified bank records produced by Chester and filed with the
court did not really matter, as long as the false allegations were
neatly typed on legal stationery, signed by a lawyer, and presented
for the court’s consideration.
The second stage of the scheme (isolation) was accomplished by
replacing the independent voices of Mary Jane and Judith with those of
their “guardians ad litem” appointed by Judge Stevens.
Attorney Meyers secured her position in the game once she was
appointed a guardian ad litem for Judith in October 2001.
In June 2003, Judge Stevens appointed Attorney John D. Welch (a timid,
middle-aged underachiever of Newburyport, Massachusetts) as “guardian
ad litem for Mary Jane Chalupowski.
There was no legal or factual basis for any of the appointments, but
inserting the lawyers in place of Judith and Mary Jane was crucial for
shifting the balance of the game from “Donna against the rest of the
family,” to: “the women of the family” against Chester, “the bad guy.”
In this way, the schemers could use not one, but three puppet
plaintiffs, whose possible interference with the scheme could be
easily controlled.
They did not have to worry about Donna, the schemers’ most reliable
mouthpiece, who delighted in spreading the absurd claims that her
brother and his wife “stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the
family trusts.”
Also, it has been fairly easy to discredit and muffle the voice of the
quiet octogenarian, Mary Jane Chalupowski. Her daughter, Judith,
however, in the late 2003, was becoming a problem, due to her open
alliance with her brother Chester and his wife, Margaret.
The problem was quickly addressed by digging up an outstanding arrest
warrant issued in a frivolous criminal case brought against Judith by
her sister Donna in November 2001. On November 14, 2003, Judith was
arrested when she showed up for one of the Probate Court hearings.
The old warrant came in handy, but Judith’s three-day incarceration in
Framingham was too short to meet the schemers’ needs. Therefore, they
quickly enlisted help of the Chief Justice of the Salem District
Court, Robert A. Cornetta who (despite the fact that the criminal
charges had been dropped for lack of evidence) ordered Judith to be
involuntarily committed under Chapter 123, section 15, of the
Massachusetts General Laws, which regulates procedures for evaluating
defendants’ mental competence to stand trial in criminal cases.
Obviously, once the criminal charges were dropped, there was no legal
basis for Judith’s “evaluation” pursuant to Chapter 123, section 15.
Nevertheless, Judith spent three months incarcerated (and medicated
against her will) at the State Mental Hospital in Tewksbury, so that
her “guardian ad litem,” Attorney Sharon D. Meyers, could freely use
Judith’s name in order to advance the scheme and to generate tens of
thousands of dollars in alleged “attorney’s fees” for herself by
bringing various unwarranted claims against Judith’s brother, Chester
without Judith’s knowledge or authorization.
Putting Judith in Tewksbury might have seemed like an easy stunt due
to her reputation of being a local oddball. Judith (once a class
salutatorian, respected math teacher, and happily married mother of
two) suffers from serious depression that she developed in the process
of extremely traumatic divorce proceedings (handled by the way by
Judge Stevens), as a result of which she has been permanently
separated from her children. The divorce drama started in 1992,
shortly after her sister Donna obtained a restraining order against
Judith’s husband, Frank Venuto. Donna’s interference in Judith’s
personal life triggered marital conflict and aggravated Judith’s
health problems, which she has been battling ever since.
Judith’s vulnerability, combined with her mother’s advanced age, made
the Chalupowski family a perfect target of the staged litigation
scheme.
The only obstacle, Chester (a successful businessman, avid athlete,
and talented musician – classical and flamenco guitarist) was by the
early 2002, effectively defamed, vilified, and isolated from the rest
of the family. He was targeted by the schemers for yet another reason:
he happened to have some money of his own.
With the family funds tied up in real estate and the two trusts, the
game was hardly worth playing. That is, until the schemers discovered
that Chester and his wife (an accomplished physician with Harvard
credentials) had over half a million dollars invested with several
financial institutions.
The feeding frenzy erupted in March 2004, shortly after Attorney
Meyers obtained Chester’s bank records by providing the banks with
subpoenas containing falsified information.
Having ascertained how much money was up for grabs, the lawyers
quickly adjusted the range of their false accusations, and the price
tag for their services, to match exactly the amount of money present
in the accounts belonging to Chester and his wife.
To accomplish their goal, they provided the courts with elaborate
“calculations” indicating that Chester and his wife “stole” about
$400,000 from the two trusts. It may seem incredible, but the fact
that there never was $400,000 to be stolen in the first place, did not
really matter to the courts.
The Heist
By May 2004, the time must have seemed ripe for the termination of the
“tar baby” Chalupowski litigation. So, on May 24, 2004, Judge DiGangi
(arrogantly oblivious to the fact that he lacked subject matter
jurisdiction over the matters pending on appeal) actually held a
“trial” on the three cases dismissed in December 2001, and in May
2004, still pending before the Appeals Court, therefore outside of
jurisdiction of the Probate Court.
When, before the May 2004 “trial,” Chester made repeated attempts to
bring to the court’s attention the issue of lack of jurisdiction, as
well as the fact that nothing was stolen from either of the trusts,
the irritated schemers quickly found a way to put him in his place by
putting him in the Middleton prison for three days on an arrest
warrant procured in a premeditated civil contempt action. After
spending the weekend of May 14, 2004, in jail, Chester (brought to the
Salem Probate Court handcuffed and shackled) was released on Monday
morning, but not before his wife wrote a check for $1,500 to the
“Judge of Probate Court,” which was later personally cashed by Judge
John C. Stevens, III.
*
The Massachusetts Appeals Court, notified by Chester of the fact that
the Essex Probate Court was handling cases pending on appeal, was of
no help either. The Appeals Court judges, obviously unwilling to
expose Judge Berry’s active participation in the “tar baby” matter,
pretended that they simply did not understand what Chester was saying
when he asked for the Appeals Court’s emergency intervention to stop
the Essex Probate Court from trying cases pending at the same time on
appeal.
On August 17, 2004, Judge DiGangi signed a 26-page “judgment”
ostentatiously put together by the resourceful team of lawyers (which
apart from Attorneys Corona, Meyers and Welch, included Chester’s own
lawyer, James R. Tewhey).
According to the “judgment” signed by Judge DiGangi, Chester stole
about $400,000 from the two trusts, committed a variety of other
repugnant acts, and was liable for over $200,000 in attorneys’ fees.
Attorneys Meyers and Welch presented elaborate billing statements,
which they filed with the Probate Court in June 2004, and amended in
September 2004. Joseph Corona did not produce billing statements of
any kind. Instead he attached to his “motion for attorney’s fees”
copies of several promissory notes signed by Donna Chalupowski for the
total amount of $95,000.
As in any such a scheme, somebody had to hold and distribute the
stolen goods in a legal-looking way.
Apparently unable to come to an agreement as to which one of them
should be the “court appointed receiver” or the new trustee of the two
Chalupowski family trusts, the group agreed in May 2004, to recruit
one more player. The new player had to be able to play his part under
an ironclad pretense of legality. Attorney Anthony (“Tony”) Metaxas, a
partner in the prestigious law firm of Metaxas, Norman and Pidgeon, a
local gray eminence of sorts, and Judge DiGangi’s golfing buddy,
seemed like the perfect choice.
He was. Armed with the invalid August 17, 2004, judgment, on August
31, 2004, Attorneys Meyers and Metaxas appeared before Judge DiGangi
and promptly obtained his signature on their “proposed order”
authorizing them to seize Chester’s assets, “in the aggregate amount
not exceeding $630,000.”
The fact that the August 17, 2004, judgment was a nullity (since it
was issued while the Essex Probate Court did not have jurisdiction to
handle the matters pending on appeal) was of no interest to the banks,
which released the funds within minutes after receiving a fax from
Attorney Metaxas. After all, why would one question Tony Metaxas of
Mataxas, Norman and Pidgeon, LLC?
In this simple way, by the stroke of Judge DiGangi’s pen, Mr. Metaxas
came into control of all the lifesavings belonging to Chester and his
wife, Margaret, for which they both had worked for over 30 years. This
is not to mention the $170,000 of the family trust’s assets, labored
over for by three generations of the Chalupowski family, and up until
the date of the heist, wisely invested in stocks and professionally
managed by Fidelity Investments.
Within days after coming into control of the accounts, Metaxas
liquidated all the stocks at huge loss, put the money into a checking
account in a local bank, and shortly thereafter started distributing
the funds by writing checks to all the players, without any
accountability.
The day before Thanksgiving 2004, the finalists of the scheme hit the
jackpot when the three top prizes were awarded in the form of checks
signed by Tony Metaxas.
The grand prize of $78,606.98 went to Attorney Sharon Meyers. Joseph
Corona took the second place with the check for $42,250. John D. Welch
got $37,050 for his short yet important involvement in the scheme.
Corona was angry that the newcomer, Welch, who had been in the scheme
merely a year, got almost as much money as he, who had been playing
the game since 1993, only to have his demanded amount of $95,000
slashed in half by Judge DiGangi, who, apparently, never really liked
Corona. At this point, Corona did not care any more about Judge
DiGangi’s affections, because after receiving the check, he promptly
retired.
Joseph Corona should not have complained. In November 2004, he was
paid over forty thousand dollars for filing five frivolous lawsuits
eleven years earlier (all of which he lost in 1996), and for re-filing
them in December 2000 (all of which he lost again in December 2001),
and for filing his frivolous appeal of the proper dismissal of his
frivolous and repetitive cases, and for constantly lying to the court.
The fact that Corona was able to pull such a stunt would be rather
funny if it were not illegal.
In order to create the appearance of legality for the distribution of
the rest of the assets stolen from Chester and his wife, Attorney
Metaxas created a virtual “payroll” of over a dozen paid positions,
which included, for example, a receiver (Metaxas), a trustee of the
realty trust (Metaxas), a trustee of the family trust (Metaxas), a
trustee’s lawyer (Carlotta Patten), Mary Jane’s guardian ad litem
(Welch), Mary Jane’s court appointed attorney (Welch), a lawyer
representing Welch before he was appointed Mary Jane’s attorney
(Margaret Barmack), Mary Jane’s guardian (Daniel Northrup), a
guardian’s attorney (Welch), guardian’s associates (several
individuals employed by Northrup, a “professional” guardian, including
Northrup’s wife, Deborah), and last but nor least, a number of doctors
(e.g. Samir Patel, Kevin Yeh) who were asked to find Mary Jane
Chalupowski in need of various services offered by the above listed
individuals.
According to Hilary Clinton, it takes a village to raise a child.
Apparently, it also takes “a village” to steal an estate.
The Appeals Court Prong
While working for over two years on sustaining and culminating the
Probate Court prong of the scheme, Attorney Meyers, a pro in
multitasking, did not neglect the parallel prong of the scheme
graciously instituted by Judge Janis M. Berry as a Single Justice of
the Appeals Court, back in February 2002.
On February 4, 2002, by circumventing proper appellate procedure,
Attorneys Meyers and Corona obtained from Judge Berry a personal favor
in a form of a stay of certain orders issued by the Salem District
Court in a related matter. Since there was no appeal from the Salem
District Court orders before Judge Berry, she acted outside of her
jurisdiction when she issued the stay, which, therefore, was void as a
matter of law.
In order to camouflage the fatal flaw of invalidity of her February 4,
2002, order of stay, Judge Berry issued another stay on August 6,
2002, this time in Corona’s frivolous appeal of the proper dismissal
of his frivolous Probate Court cases.
There were at least two serious problems with the second stay issued
by Judge Berry. First, in August 2002, Corona’s appeal was not
perfected since Corona, after filing his notices of appeal in December
2001, did nothing to perfect his appeal. Second, a stay can only be
issued in cases where the party seeking the stay has a chance to win
the appeal on the merits. Since Corona was appealing the dismissal of
cases that were barred by the doctrine of res judicata, there was no
probability of winning the appeal. Therefore, the stay could not have
been issued. That is, if Judge Berry had followed the normal paradigm
of practice of law, under which law and the rules of the court do
matter. However, since Corona, Meyers, and Judge Berry seemed to be
favoring the abnormal paradigm, they ignored law and the rules of the
court as they pleased.
Attorney Meyers had another problem to solve. Corona was appealing the
dismissal of the cases brought on behalf of Donna against Mary Jane,
Judith, and Chester. So, technically, Meyers, acting (legitimately or
not) on Judith’s behalf, should have been on the same side as Chester,
opposing the appeal. But this was the last thing she wanted to do. To
get on the same side as Corona at the appeal level, Meyers fabricated
a pleading, dated it January 14, 2002, and in June 2002, filed it with
the Appeals Court claiming that it was a copy of a pleading coming
from the Probate Court file. It was a fraud, a fraud on the court to
be exact, but it worked. Who would ever question Attorney Meyers? And
from then on, it looked as if Donna and Judith were on the same side
of the appeal.
Around that time, Mary Jane’s name mysteriously jumped the docket page
from Chester’s side to Donna’s side (courtesy of the Appeals Court
clerks), and this shrewd maneuver completed at the Appeals Court
level, shifted the strategic balance from “Donna against the rest of
the family” to “the women of the family against Chester, the bad guy.”
To be clear, when the cases were dismissed in December 2001, the
defendants, Mary Jane, Judith, and Chester won. One could ask why
would the winning parties (Judith and Mary Jane) join the loser
(Donna) in appealing their victory. The reason is simple. The lawyers,
who were using Judith and Mary Jane as puppet plaintiffs, needed to
make money. Also, the absurdity of the situation had additional value
important to the schemers. It created more chaos and confusion, making
it difficult to see what exactly was going on in the “complicated
Chalupowski matter.”
Chester did what he could to clarify the situation. On December 4,
2002, he filed his motion for reconsideration of Judge Berry’s August
2002 order. Judge Berry promptly denied the motion and Chester filed
his notice of appeal. His appeal was processed and docketed by the
Appeals Court on February 5, 2002.
After Corona filed his notices of appeal in December 2001, he did
nothing to perfect the appeal; therefore, the Probate Court clerks,
according to the rules of the court, should have dismissed the appeal.
They did not.
Thus, on December 2, 2002, Chester filed with the Probate Court his
motion to dismiss Corona’s appeal. On December 9, 2002, Chester’s
motion was heard and denied by Judge Stevens, and Corona was given
more time to perfect his appeal, the Probate Court assembled the
record, and Corona’s appeal was docketed by the Appeals Court on
February 17, 2003.
In this way, two weeks after Chester’s legitimate appeal was docketed,
it was joined by its illegitimate ‘twin brother,’ i.e. Corona’s
appeal.
The Appeals Court was not in a hurry to address the inconvenient truth
contained in Chester’s appeal, so both appeals sat dormant for well
over a year. This delay gave Attorney Meyers an opportunity to
capitalize on both orders of stay issued by Judge Berry. The fact that
one of the orders was void and the other one was erroneous as a matter
of law did not really matter. In the skillful hands of Attorney
Meyers, even invalid or erroneous orders could be turned into a
lucrative “billing opportunity.”
Hence, on December 30, 2003, Attorney Meyers, having secured Judith’s
illegal incarceration in Tewksbury (courtesy of Judge Cornetta of the
Salem District Court), filed with the Appeals Court, without Judith’s
knowledge and approval, a contempt action against Chester.
The hearing on Meyers’ contempt action, strategically postponed
several times, was held by Judge Berry on June 10 and 11, 2004, i.e.
shortly after the Probate Court “tried” the cases dismissed in
December 2001, and pending on appeal.
Several witnesses were summonsed to testify, including Attorney John
D. Welch and Chester. Welch gave his sworn testimony as to Mary Jane’s
mindset in October 2002. Mr. Welch failed to mention, however, that he
did not meet Mary Jane until October 2003. Technically, Welch
committed a perjury, but, all in all, he proved to be a good witness
for the purposes of the scheme.
Chester, on the other hand, according to his attorney, James R. Tewhey,
would not make a good witness. Therefore Tewhey advised Chester that
he should invoke the Fifth Amendment protection against
self-incrimination, in order to avoid testifying. To alleviate
Chester’s doubts as to the strange strategy, Tewhey assured him that
invoking the Fifth could not be used against him. Tewhey failed to
mention that this is true only in the context of criminal proceedings.
In civil cases, the person invoking the Fifth does not enjoy the same
protection.
Altogether, the contempt action masterminded by Attorney Meyers was a
success, especially since at the end of the first day of the hearings,
Chester inadvertently created an opportunity, capitalizing on which
Tewhey and Meyers could not resist. Leaving the courtroom, Chester
said aloud to Meyers that she would not get away with what she was
doing. Meyers responded with a sarcastic smile.
When half-an-hour later Chester and his wife were getting into their
car a block away from the courthouse, two Appeals Court security
guards ran up to Chester, handcuffed him and brought him back to the
court.
Not sure what to do with their ‘catch’ after 5:00 PM, the two guards,
after making some frantic phone calls, walked Chester, handcuffed,
through the streets of downtown Boston to the nearby City of Boston
Police Station, where they dropped him off and left. The Chief of the
Station, summoned for the occasion from his way home, ordered Chester
released, and said to him, “Sir, I hope you understand that the Boston
Police did not arrest you.”
Attorney Meyers, meanwhile, was hurriedly filling out a complaint form
in which she made false statements about the incident.
Attorney Meyers did not pursue her claim filed with the Boston Police.
There was no need. By then Chester’s credibility was tarnished enough.
There was no question that a guy who was arrested twice, spent a
weekend in the Middleton prison, and took the “Fifth,” must be guilty
of something.
Judge Berry took the contempt matter “under advisement” and would not
be heard from for over 18 months, until November 2005.
*
In the summer of 2004, everything seemed to be under control. The two
prongs of the scheme were successfully wrapped up, and a final
decision was issued in the Probate Court matter stating clearly that
Chester stole $400,000 from two trusts, and was to pay almost quarter
of a million dollars to the attorneys who “worked hard” to catch him.
The only problem was that, first, nothing was stolen from either of
the two trusts, and, second, the cases allegedly culminated in May by
Judge DiGangi’s elaborate 26-page-long decision, were still pending
before the Appeals Court when the decision was issued by Judge DiGangi
on August 17, 2004.
It would be an embarrassment, one with serious legal and disciplinary
consequences, if the true nature of the two-pronged scheme were
exposed. Therefore, the three-judge panel of the Appeals Court (Gelinas,
Smith, and Trainor) who were considering the two appeals decided to
“play possum.”
The facts and law of the two appeals were simple. Corona’s appeal was
frivolous. The dismissals he was appealing were proper because the
claims brought by him in December 2000 were decided on their merits in
1996, and, as such, were barred by the statute of limitations and the
doctrine of res judicata. Chester’s appeal of the two orders of stay
issued by Judge Berry was legitimate. Judge Berry did not have
jurisdiction to issue the February 4, 2002, stay and the stay issued
on August 6, 2002, was erroneous as a matter of law.
The three judges did not want to admit the obvious. So they simply
said in their Rule 1:28 unpublished Memorandum dated August 20, 2002,
“the case presents a Gordian Knot of procedural and substantial
confusion which we, on the record before us, are unable to unravel
[…]”
Having invented the “Gordian Knot” excuse, the three judges remanded
the cases barred by res judicata to the Probate Court, to be handled
for the fourth time, and affirmed Judge Berry’s decisions. The Probate
Court ignored the order of remand, even though Chester filed his
request for trial assignment, as required by the court rules.
Attorney Meyers turned the panel’s decision into one more moneymaking
opportunity, proving one more time that “with the Bench cozied up with
the Bar, the lawyers can’t lose.”
On September 17, 2004, Chester filed his application for further
appellate review of the panel’s unpublished Rule 1:28 decision with
the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Further review was
denied.
The Third Prong
While the two prongs of the main scheme were carefully cultivated at
the Essex Probate Court and the Appeals Court Single Justice level, a
seemingly separate stream of events was quietly developing in a
seemingly unrelated case brought against Chester and his wife,
Margaret, by the Board of Trustees of the Tuck Point Condominium Trust
in Beverly, a picturesque waterfront condominium complex where Chester
and Margaret own their one-bedroom unit overlooking the Beverly
Harbor.
In early March 2003, for no apparent reason, the Tuck Point Trustees
decided to claim that Chester and Margaret owed $1,718 in unpaid condo
fees.
The fact that they did not owe a dime in condo fees (in fact, the Tuck
Point Trust owed them over $3,000 in overcharges) did not really
matter in the context of Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 183,
Section 6C, according to which, a condo owner accused of being in
arrears, in order to be able to dispute the allegations, first has to
pay whatever is demanded.
Chester and Margaret did not know this law, but by the summer of 2003,
after spending some time at several law libraries, they figured it
out. On August 10, 2003, they did provide, under protest, the Tuck
Point Trust with their check for $1,718. Despite this payment, the
Tuck Point Trustees kept pursuing their false claim for over a year,
until July 2004, when they got a judgment (from the Salem District
Court Judge Robert Cornetta, by the way) for $19,180.48. When Chester
and Margaret tried to dispute the legality of the charges, the
attorneys for the Tuck Point Trust scheduled a foreclosure sale of
their unit for September 9, 2004.
Still unaware of the August 31, 2004 order of attachment obtained by
Metaxas and Meyers from Judge DiGangi, Chester and Margaret managed to
get a cashier’s check for $19,180.48, only hours before all their
accounts were closed, and Fed-ex it to the lawyer for the Tuck Point
Trust, just in time to stop the foreclosure.
If this were a script for a movie, the sequence of events and the
interrelation of the three prongs would be rejected as too
coincidental to be believable. It took some time for Chester and
Margaret to discover the connection. Faced with the accusations of
unpaid condo fees, at first they believed that the false claim was
made in retaliation for their outspoken attitude about the serious
chemical contamination of the Tuck Point site, going back to the
beginning of the 20th century. The problem was never properly
addressed either by the developers (who in the early 1980s set out to
make money by building residential dwellings on the top of a toxic
dumpsite), or by the revolving sets of the Tuck Point Board of
Trustees, led in the early 2000s by a Mr. Bruce Patten, President of
the Peabody Power and Light Corporation, whose employee, Richard
Warren, happened to land a contract for $400,000 to clean up the Tuck
Point site, and who, although paid in full, never did the job.
Chester, always vocal about the financial mysteries surrounding the
environmental cleanup, the lead petitioner in the grassroots
environmental initiative, and the co-author of a revealing article
published at the website of the American Homeowners Resource Center (AHRC),
was a target of various retaliatory actions (nasty letters,
unjustified fines, dead skunks under his car).
Therefore, the false claim of unpaid condo fees seemed like one more,
although the most cruel and costly, way of forcing him to stop his
environmental crusade. While the very filing of the false claim of
unpaid condo fees could have been seen as a purely retaliatory action,
the timing of the final blow was too well coordinated with the main
blitzkrieg operation to be coincidental. But how would the Tuck Point
Trustees even know about the attachment of Chester’s personal assets
obtained by Mr. Metaxas?
Chester and Margaret struggled to find the connection between the main
scheme and the collateral attack. Then, in the early October 2004,
they received a letter from Anthony Metaxas, signed by his Associate,
Attorney Carlotta Patten, the daughter-in-law of Bruce Patten, their
Tuck Point adversary.
Looking for Redress outside of Courts
Long before his money was stolen, Chester repeatedly had tried to
alert various law enforcement authorities, as well as other overseeing
entities, about the ongoing scheme.
In September 1996, Corona, having lost the first batch of his
frivolous cases, demanded from Chester $15,000, “cash, not negotiable,
within a week” in exchange for leaving Chester and his family alone.
Otherwise, Corona threatened to make Chester’s life a “living hell.”
Chester did not give Corona the money. Instead he reported the
extortion attempt to the Salem Police and to the Massachusetts Bar.
The Salem Police and the Bar ignored the complaints despite the fact
that Mary Jane’s lawyer, Attorney Jayne Davidson, provided her own
statement about her encounter with Joseph Corona who in August 1995,
appeared, unannounced, at her office in Nahant, and offered to stop
pursuing the first batch of his frivolous cases if she gave him
$10,000, cash. When Jayne told Corona that she would report his
conduct to the Bar, Corona advised her that if she did that, he would
be the last person she ever reported.
Having received no ransom either from Chester or from Attorney
Davidson, Corona made good on his threat to make Chester’s life a
“living hell” and in December 2000, started the game all over again by
re-filing his frivolous cases.
Having grown impatient that his new scheme was not producing any
tangible results (i.e. money), in June 2003, Corona informed Chester
that he would be willing to withdraw from the litigation in exchange
for $50,000, cash, non-negotiable.
Chester did not give Corona the $50,000. Instead in July 2003, he
reported the third extortion attempt to the Office of Attorney General
for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The Intake Officer, State Trooper Marion Fletcher, after reviewing the
record, promptly arranged for Chester and his wife to meet with
Assistant Attorney General John Grossman and Sergeant William
Christiansen at the Boston AG office, as well as with Special Agent
Larry Travaglia at the FBI Office in Lowell.
Messers Grossman and Christiansen listened politely, promised to look
into the matter, and nine months later, in April 2004, sent a
one-sentence letter informing Chester that the Criminal Bureau of the
AG Office could be “of no further assistance.” When in November 2004,
Chester informed AAG Grossmann that, while his office was “of no
further assistance,” the schemers had finalized the scheme and had
stolen $800,000, AAG Grossman chose to leave Chester’s missive
unanswered.
Special Agent Larry Travaglia (sporting Robert DeNiro’s haircut and
demeanor), after making it clear during the July 15, 2003 meeting that
he was busy chasing drug dealers, gun slingers, and various other
criminals more dangerous than Joseph Corona and his influential
colleagues, asked to be kept informed in case “something more serious”
happened.
When, in September 2004, Chester informed Agent Travaglia that
something more serious (like the theft of the $800,000) had happened,
Agent Travaglia left an angry message on Chester’s answering machine
complete with a warning, “don’t call me anymore.”
Special Agent Travaglia’s professional priorities seemed to be at odds
with those outlined by federal judge Mark L. Wolf, who in February
2004, in “an unusually frank discussions with reporters” of The Boston
Globe, criticized the U.S. District Attorney Michael Sullivan for
spending too much time on drug and gun cases that belong in state
courts, instead of focusing on federal public corruption and
white-collar crimes committed by “bigger and morally more culpable
people.”
Attorney Sullivan had an opportunity to avoid Judge Wolf’s criticism
by focusing on crimes committed by bigger and morally more culpable
people, when Chester Chalupowski reported the ongoing Essex Probate
Court scheme to the Public Corruption and Special Prosecutions Unit of
the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in February 2003.
The Unit avoided the issue for almost two years, until the Head of the
Unit, Attorney Stephen Huggard, assigned the matter to two FBI Agents,
Kevin Constantine and Peter Ericson, who on December 20, 2004, spent
three hours talking to Chester and his wife, and reviewing the court
files, at the couple’s residence in Beverly.
When Chester called Attorney Huggard’s Office, after getting no
feedback during the following two months, he was advised that Attorney
Huggard had been on sick leave for a while and eventually left his
position altogether to pursue a career in the private sector.
Left with no follow-up to his somewhat promising December 20, 2004,
encounter with the two FBI Agents, Chester placed a polite inquiry
directly with the Attorney Sullivan’s Office in March 2005. Cautious
not to appear impolite, Chester waited patiently for a response until,
on April 14, 2005, he realized that the response would not be
forthcoming.
On April 14, 2005, the Shubert Theater in Boston hosted the Federalist
Society, which, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Shakespeare
Company, presented Law and Order in Verona, a stage reading of Romeo
and Juliet followed by a panel discussion on crime and punishment in
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The otherwise unremarkable artistic event was newsworthy due to the
fact that the roles of Shakespeare’s characters were played by various
representatives of the local legal and political establishment. In
addition to Kerry Healy, then Lieutenant Governor, and Martha Coakley,
the current Attorney General of Massachusetts, the cast included
Michael Sullivan, U.S. District Attorney, as well as several federal
and state judges, Janis M. Berry, among them.
When leaving the theater, Chester and his wife noticed Attorney
Sullivan and Judge Berry engaged in an overly friendly chat, they then
realized that Attorney Sullivan was unlikely to make Chester’s
complaint about the Essex County scheme his investigative priority.
Needless to say, Attorney Sullivan never responded to Chester’s letter
dated April 28, 2005.
*
While the representatives of the Essex County law enforcement
authorities did not make it to the prestigious cast of the
Shakespeare’s drama, they did play an important role in making sure
that the scheme would not get exposed.
When in September and December 2004, Chester and Margaret reported the
three-pronged staged litigation scheme disguised as legitimate court
proceedings to the Essex County District Attorney’s Office, they did
not know that, if the Essex DA Office were to intervene, it could mean
that the Assistant District Attorney, Michael Patten, would have to
prosecute his own wife, Carlotta Patten, and her boss, Anthony Metaxas.
(How awkward.)
In addition, if the Essex DA Office were to intervene, the DA,
Jonathan Blodgett, would have to prosecute his former employer, Bruce
Patten, who had given him two jobs: one as a legal counsel for the
Peabody Power and Light Corporation, and another one as a legal
counsel for the Tuck Point Condominium Board of Trustees, when
Attorney Blodgett (before getting his salaried position as the Essex
County DA) was still a struggling lawyer trying to make a living in
private practice.
In the context of the peculiar ‘Patten connection,’ it might be
entirely irrelevant that Jonathan Blodgett’s father worked at the golf
course frequented by two avid players, Peter DiGangi and Anthony
Metaxas.
Instead of disclosing the multi-layered conflict of interests, the
representatives of the Essex DA Office pretended for several months
that they were investigating the matter.
In June 2005, Assistant District Attorney Gregory Friedholm invited
Chester and his wife, Margaret, to his office, and while two other DA
Officers, John Dawley and Jack Dullea, also present in the room, were
busy looking at the floor, Attorney Friedholm stuttered awkwardly that
since, there was “judicial oversight” over all of the court
proceedings, the Essex County DA could not get involved.
When asked for a letter documenting the Essex DA’s position on the
matter, Attorney Friedholm refused.
*
In comparison with the offices of the local, state and federal
district attorneys, other entities charged with overseeing the
performance of the Massachusetts courts and their officers, were much
more efficient in producing written excuses as to why they would not
intervene.
In October 2004, Chester managed to submit his well-documented
complaint through the reluctantly unlocked, unmarked, and only
slightly ajar, door of the office of Sean M. Dunphy, the Chief
Administrative Justice of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Courts,
inconspicuously located at Two Center Plaza in Boston, Suite 210.
Eight months later, on May 3, 2005, Chief Justice Dunphy sent Chester
a quite friendly letter explaining in detail that, in late 2004, he,
Chief Justice Dunphy, was not quite well and had to take medical
leave, which was why he could not respond earlier, and that he, Chief
Justice Dunphy, did not understand what Chester wanted from him.
It may be a coincidence, but the belated response from Chief Justice
Dunphy came shortly after Chester and his wife filed four complaints
against four judges involved in the scheme with the Massachusetts
Commission on Judicial Conduct (CJC), on April 25, 2005. Six months
later, on October 24, 2005, the CJC sent Chester and his wife four
nice letters in which the CJC Chairman, Robert J. Guttentag, informed
them politely that the CJC had decided to dismiss all four complaints
for lack of “evidence of judicial misconduct.”
While it is not quite clear what kind of strings the four judges had
to pull to make Mr. Guttentag come to his conclusion, much more
transparent is the connection between the Essex County schemers and
the Boston Bar of Overseers.
When in 2003 and 2004, Chester submitted to BBO his complaints against
Meyers, Welch, and finally, on October 4, 2005, against 13 lawyers
(all of whom received money coming from Chester’s assets) he did not
know that the State Bar Counsel, Daniel Crane, knew well, and had an
ongoing professional relationship with Attorney Sharon D. Meyers.
Needless to say, the BBO never responded to Chester’s complaint.
Looking for Redress in State Courts
Suing the Puppeteer
On September 20, 2003, after enduring ten years of “living hell,”
Chester filed his Superior Court action against Joseph Corona, but he
did not know that his newly acquired attorney, Isaac Peres of Boston,
was lying to him.
Attorney Peres was very convincing when he insisted that “the only and
the best way” to get Corona was to bring the claim of violation of
Chapter 93A of the General Laws of Massachusetts. While convincing his
client, Attorney Isaac Peres failed to mention, however, that the law
is clear that a claim of Chapter 93A violation cannot be brought
against an adversary’s lawyer.
On December 18, 2003, Judge Howard Whitehead (after correctly
diagnosing the case as one brought against an attorney who had used a
dupe plaintiff to satisfy his own interests) dismissed the Chapter 93A
count, but preserved the count of intentional infliction of emotional
distress, which Peres reluctantly included in the complaint only
because Chester was adamant that Chapter 93A count was not enough.
Having had lost one of the two counts of the complaint, Attorney Peres
became especially uninterested in pursuing the case after Chester’s
wife, Margaret, was attacked in a dark parking lot in Beverly on
February 6, 2004, by an armed and masked individual, who made it clear
that he was delivering a message on behalf of “Joe.” Coincidently, the
assault took place shortly after Attorney Peres tried to schedule
Corona’s deposition.
Aware that Corona had a documented history of violent behavior
(according to the court records, in 1985, Corona armed with a knife
publicly accosted local publisher, Damon Lyons), Isaac Peres became
somewhat apprehensive when he learned that, in October 2003, Corona’s
officemate, Attorney Charles Rancourt, made the front page in the
Salem News after he shot a 5-inch hole in his leg with a .357 Magnum
pistol, a part of his extensive gun collection consisting of 47
weapons, including 9 mm semiautomatics and submachine guns. According
to the Salem News, Beverly Police were notified by the ATF in March
2003, that Charles Rancourt was about to take delivery of 31 weapons,
even though his gun permits were suspended.
Corona, also an avid gun collector, must have had his permits in order
because he stunned the judge during one of the Superior Court hearings
by politely inquiring whether he could bring a gun to his deposition
to be taken by Chester and Margaret.
In late June 2004, Attorney Peres, a happily married father of three,
quite suddenly filed his motion to withdraw from the case. The motion
was promptly allowed over Chester’s opposition by Judge Diane
Kottmeyer, who felt really sorry for poor Isaac Peres for having
gotten himself involved in that notorious Chalupowski litigation.
Chester has been handling the case pro se ever since.
During the court hearings in the case, Corona has been always very
eager to properly display an air of indignation over the fact that he,
a respected retired attorney, has been sued by Chester Chalupowski,
the crazy pro se litigant, who, according to Judge DiGangi’s
“findings,” is an “adjudicated embezzler,” having stolen hundreds of
thousands of dollars from his mother’s trusts.
The Superior Court judges have always listened politely when Corona
calls Chester the “adjudicated embezzler.” After all Corona is a
lawyer, and he can readily substantiate his words by slamming his
dog-eared copy of Judge DiGangi’s August 17, 2004, judgment against
the counsel table or by waving it in front of the bench.
When Chester tries to address the lies, he is always reminded that
whatever Corona said is not the subject matter of the specific
hearing, and that there is no need to contradict Corona’s statements
because the judge is not listening to them anyway.
When Chester insists on putting his objections on record, a Security
Guard gets up from his chair, puts his hand on the handcuffs dangling
from his belt, and looks at the judge for instructions. The
intimidation tactics always work. Chester, mindful of his Middleton
experience, gives up, and Corona’s lies stay on the record unopposed.
What the judges do not see is that after each such hearing, Corona
makes a point of giving Chester and Margaret his trademark “evil eye”
meaning “catch me if you can.”
Meanwhile, Isaac Peres, the lawyer who cowardly abandoned his client
after botching the case, is eternally grateful for Judge Kottmeyer’s
decision that allowed him to get out of this “Chalupowski mess.”
Suing the Puppet
While Isaac Peres was becoming less and less diligent in handling the
case against Joseph Corona, Chester was advised by one of the many
lawyers he talked with, that it was a mistake not to include the
‘puppet’ plaintiff, his sister Donna, as a co-defendant in the case
against the ‘puppeteer.’
In order to correct the mistake, and to present to the court the
complete picture of the scheme, Chester and Margaret filed their
27-page, 15-count complaint against Donna Chalupowski with the
Superior Court in Salem on May 8, 2004, with the intention to
consolidate it with the case against Joseph Corona for the sake of
judicial economy.
They were surprised to see that Donna filed pro se a timely answer to
the complaint, neatly typed in a quite professional manner.
Determined to shed some light on the scheme through documenting the
puppet-puppeteer alliance, Chester and Margaret promptly scheduled
depositions of the defendant, Donna Chalupowski, as well as several
witnesses, including Joseph Corona, John D. Welch, and Sharon D.
Meyers.
When Joseph Corona and Donna Chalupowski ignored the subpoenas,
Chester and Margaret asked the court for an order compelling their
attendance. The request was granted, and in late October and early
November 2004, both depositions took place, albeit not without
difficulties (Donna was repeatedly yelling at the stenographer and
Corona refused to answer 80% of the questions). This forced the
plaintiffs to suspend both depositions at some point.
Still, the transcripts of both depositions taken in late 2004 clearly
show that Judge Whitehead correctly diagnosed the case against Corona
as one brought against an attorney-puppeteer using a puppet plaintiff
to satisfy the puppeteer’s own interests. Also, it was clear from the
deposition of Donna Chalupowski that she did not mind being used as a
puppet plaintiff, as long as she could prove to the world that her
brother and his wife had stolen “hundreds of thousands of dollars”
from the two trusts.
When Attorneys John Welch and Sharon Meyers received their subpoenas
for the depositions, they turned for help to Tony Metaxas. Tony,
always reliable, came to their rescue and promptly filed a motion to
intervene using the invalid judgment issued by Judge DiGangi as a
basis for his standing. Metaxas explained to the court that Meyers and
Welch, both very busy attorneys, should not be “harassed” by the pro
se litigants, who must be crazy to even think about deposing lawyers.
Tony’s intervention obviously worked. Not only did Meyers and Welch
not have to be bothered with coming to the depositions, all the
proceedings in the case were stayed until further notice. It took
Chester and Margaret over a year to re-open the discovery in the case.
When Judge Whitehead concluded during one of the hearings in November
2005 that Donna Chalupowski, still acting pro se in the case, should
be evaluated by a court appointed psychologist, the schemers panicked
that the truth about their chief puppet plaintiff might come out, and
within days they recruited Attorney Joseph Collins to act as Donna’s
new lawyer.
Attorney Collins, an ex-Marine with a strong instinct to follow orders
but no litigation experience, eagerly jumped right into Joseph
Corona’s shoes as soon as Attorney Metaxas invited him to provide his
billing statements directly to the Law Office of Metaxas, Norman &
Pidgeon, LLC.
Eager to prove his usefulness to the scheme, Attorney Collins
painstakingly produced an elaborate motion for summary judgment using
the invalid order issued by Judge Digangi as a basis for his claim
that the case against Donna should be dismissed because Judge DiGangi
took care of the problem by issuing his August 17, 2004 order.
Obviously, Attorney Collins forgot to mention that Judge DiGangi’s
order was void as a matter of law, and as such could not constitute a
basis for any subsequent action.
Judge David Lowy (who took over the case from Judge Whitehead around
the time Mr. Metaxas expressed his desire to intervene) went the extra
mile to appear thoughtful and impartial during a court hearing on
Collins’ motion, which happened to be attended by a young reporter
from the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, pursuing an ambitious
journalistic endeavor called “shadowing judges.”
Judge Lowy did not mind the media “shadow” in his courtroom. After
all, the Boston media gave his wife, Virginia Buckingham, a safe
harbor job after she left her prior employer, Massport, amidst a 9/11
related scandal involving security violations which allowed the
terrorists to walk freely through Logan Airport.
Presumably, Judge Lowy could enlist some editorial help from his wife,
the writer, but it took him over a month to come up with his 20-page
decision, in which Judge Lowy, duly persuaded by the existence of
Judge DiGangi’s August 17, 2004 judgment, chopped off twelve of the
fifteen counts originally contained in the complaint.
The radical operation, so eagerly performed by Judge Lowy, left the
case severely detruncated but not dead, contrary to the perception of
the MLW reporter, who got the story backwards when his newspaper
published it. Chester and Margaret had to write a letter to clarify
the mistake, but they never received any response from the MLW editor.
All in all, Attorney Collins did his best to fill Joseph Corona’s
shoes, until he had to abandon his strategically important outpost
when he got a salaried position with the Essex County DA Office in
Salem in late 2006.
The ex-Marine with no litigation experience was promptly replaced by
Attorney John Morris, with even less professional experience, but
equal commitment to the cause (the scheme, that is to say).
Attorney Morris, not a Marine by any measure, found the convenience of
sending his billing statements directly to Mr. Metaxas attractive
enough to ignore the fact that the judgment pursuant to which Metaxas
was giving him Chester’s money was invalid as a matter of law.
Suing the Grey Eminence
Attorney Anthony Metaxas, having come into control of over $800,000 as
a result of the successful culmination of the Probate Court scheme,
did not even bother to provide any accounting as to how much money he
actually received, and what exactly he did with it.
Neither did he bother to pay any bills, despite the fact that, by the
summer of 2004, he was already controlling all the estate’s money,
including Mary Jane’s social security and pension. In August 2004,
Chester had to spend over $5,000 of his own money (which at that point
he still had) to pay his mother’s and the realty trust property’s
bills.
Since asking the Probate Court to do the right thing and to remove Mr.
Metaxas from his illegally occupied position as the trustee of the
Chalupowski trusts was pointless, Chester and Margaret, after
carefully considering their options, turned to the Superior Court for
assistance. By then, their experience with the Superior Court led them
to believe that within that forum, at least, law and the rules of the
court did matter, and as long as they obeyed the rules, they could
actually be heard.
On November 12, 2004, Chester and Margaret filed with the Essex
Superior Court their 12-page, 5-count petition to remove Anthony
Metaxas from his purported position of the trustee of the two trusts.
Their Superior Court case against Anthony Metaxas was short-lived,
however. The moment the plaintiffs tried to start their discovery and
sent the deposition subpoenas to the defendant, Metaxas, and to the
witness, Attorney Sharon Meyers, a stay of proceedings was issued by
Judge Richard Welch, III (Attorney John D. Welch’s second cousin) who
concluded that the matter would be “better addressed” by the Probate
Court.
Three months later the case was quietly dismissed by the court without
a hearing, and without any notice to the plaintiffs.
Suing own Lawyers
The staged litigation schemes would never work if their perpetrators
were not able to secure at least some compliance or the cooperation of
the opposing counsel.
It is not as difficult as one may think. After all, lawyers on both
sides have to pay their bills, and sometimes siding with the
opposition instead of zealously representing one’s own client, may be
a better option, for the lawyer, that is to say, not for the client.
Of the ten lawyers engaged by Chester throughout the litigation to
represent his, his mother’s, and his wife’s interests, at least four
left a well-documented trail of helping the opposition, through their
negligence, incompetence, or outright betrayal and fraud.
What can a person betrayed by his lawyer do? Bring a legal malpractice
action. The paradox is that one needs a lawyer to sue a lawyer. And
this is where the legal malpractice business gets tricky.
When Chester and Mary Jane Chalupowski hired Attorney Karl F. Stammen
of Boston in the summer of 1998 to bring a legal malpractice action
against Attorney Robert Holloway, (Chester’s first counsel, who
between 1993 and 1995 did nothing to stop Corona from cultivating the
first batch of five frivolous cases), they did not know that Attorney
Stammen’s poor performance would warrant another legal malpractice
action against Attorney Stammen himself.
But Chester would need yet another lawyer to bring a legal malpractice
action against Karl Stammen who, apart from botching the legal
malpractice action against Holloway, was instrumental in allowing the
scheme to thrive at the Probate and Appeals Court level. But what if
the third lawyer would fail to do his job?
The only way to break the chain was to bring a legal malpractice
action without using a lawyer, i.e. pro se.
This is exactly what Chester and his wife, Margaret, did in order to
hold their three lawyers (Stammen, Peres, and Tewhey) accountable for
their negligence, incompetence, and ultimate betrayal.
Legal malpractice actions, by definition, are difficult to win.
Bringing them pro se is almost unheard of, and, obviously, vehemently
discouraged by the legal community.
In addition, in the case of the legal malpractice cases brought
against the participants of the staged litigation scheme, everybody
who facilitated the scheme (from court clerks to judges) would have
vested interest in helping the defendants to thwart any of the
plaintiffs’ efforts that could expose the essence of the scheme.
Faced with obvious liability and gigantic damages, the three
defendants, in order to avoid addressing the merits of the cases,
resorted to procedural tricks and outright lies. It is remarkable that
the three separate cases filed against Attorneys Stammen, Peres, and
Tewhey follow a surprisingly similar pattern.
The first thing Karl Stammen did after being served the complaint in
January 2005, was to ask the court to prevent Chester’s wife,
Margaret, from being a co-plaintiff in the case. In a way, Stammen’s
tactics worked. His motion was heard by Judge Fahey in June 2005, and
has been “under advisement” ever since.
When Isaac Peres was served the complaint filed in December 2006, the
first thing he did was also to ask the court to prevent Margaret from
being a co-plaintiff in the case. However, Peres did not buy any time
applying Stammen’s method because his motion was promptly denied. So,
unwilling to address the merits of the complaint, to which he does not
have any defense (considering the clarity of the Chapter 93A law) he
asked the court to dismiss the case, claiming that the plaintiffs
failed to respond to his discovery request, which was not true.
When James Tewhey learned about the complaint shortly after it was
filed, he was hiding for four days from the Essex County Sheriff, the
server of the summons and complaint, in an effort to beat the deadline
for service, and hoping that Chester and Margaret did not know about
the protective measures a plaintiff can take when a defendant is
evading the service.
It appears that Tewhey, a former Dean at MIT turned lawyer, has never
been a model of professional integrity. In 1993, the MIT community
celebrated Tewhey’s sudden departure from academia, amidst a notorious
sex scandal, by erecting a sarcastic tombstone in front of the Student
Center in Cambridge.
If any of the lawyers, defendants in the four legal malpractice cases,
had done the job they were hired and paid to do, the scheme would have
never been developed, or it would have been exposed and stopped long
ago; the malpractice cases would have been unnecessary.
If Robert Holloway had done his job instead of playing cards with
Corona, Corona’s stunt would have been stopped before it started in
1993.
If Karl Stammen had done his job in 1998, the Corona-Holloway alliance
would have been exposed, and Corona would never have been able to
start his game all over again by re-filing his frivolous cases in
December 2000, since they were disposed of in 1996.
If Isaac Peres and James Tewhey had done their job in 2003, the scheme
would have been exposed. Consequently, all their money-hungry
colleagues would have had to put a tombstone on their cherished
scheme, and the 2004 heist with the $630,000 jackpot would have never
happened.
But this was where the problem lay. The $630,000 (not including other
funds) would not have been available for distribution. And how would
all the lawyers have paid their bills without getting Chester’s money?
What Joseph Corona and his dupe plaintiff, Donna Chalupowski, started
in 1993 is a virtual enterprise, a cascade of moneymaking
opportunities for over two dozen lawyers.
Between 1993 and 2004, Mary Jane, Chester and Margaret Chalupowski had
to recruit 10 lawyers to defend themselves against Corona’s actions.
At least four of these lawyers left a documented trail of wrongdoings.
In addition, since 1993, at least 16 lawyers have joined Corona’s side
of the enterprise. This brings the number of lawyers making money in
the vexatious litigation to 26. The “village” of the beneficiaries of
the scheme also includes at least a dozen various other ancillary
players; psychologists, doctors, social workers, stenographers,
paralegals, process servers, etc.
All of these people have been paid as a result of the scheme. The
payouts range from $200 pittances to the $80,000 jackpot hit by
Attorney Sharon Meyers in November 2004 (which does not include over
$30,000 “awarded” to her since then).
So, where did all this money come from? Nothing is coming from the two
trusts, since there are no liquid assets in the realty trust, and the
family trust (which in early 2004, held about $170,000) allows only
income distribution, and only to Mary Jane.
Since Metaxas liquidated the stocks managed by Fidelity Investments
(while providing no accounting whatsoever), it appears that the
trust’s assets, if they still exist, do not produce any income.
Some small part of the money received by the main players and other
actors was paid out from Mary Jane’s personal income. The overwhelming
majority of the money used since 2004 by Anthony Metaxas are Chester’s
and Margaret’s lifesavings, stolen from them in September 2004.
At the same time, the estate is losing at least $10,000 a month in
unrealized rental income. The two buildings held in the realty trust
consist of a total of seven residential units. Mary Jane occupies one
unit. The remaining six units are either occupied rent-free (in
violation of the trust’s provisions) or held hostage by Judith, Donna,
and Donna’s live-in companions.
Chester, as trustee of the realty trust, struggled for years to
address the problem, and in January 2002, obtained a writ of execution
from the Salem District Court allowing for the eviction of the
freeloading group.
This is when Judge Berry came to the rescue and issued her February
2002 stay, preventing the evictions. Since then, the trust has lost at
least $720,000 in unrealized rental income, which would have been
generated if Chester had been allowed to manage the property. This
$720,000 loss is a direct consequence of Judge Berry’s actions taken
outside her jurisdiction.
The exponential effect of financial devastation is unbearable. Once
their money was stolen, Chester and Margaret lost all their investment
opportunities. Also, since over $300,000 of the funds taken by Metaxas
came from a refinancing of two properties owned by Chester and his
wife individually, they are now left with over $7,000 a month in
mortgage payments on the money currently enjoyed by Attorneys Metaxas,
Meyers, Corona, Welch and others.
During one of the recent court hearings, the Superior Court Judge
Patrick Riley expressed his concern that the malpractice cases brought
by Chester and Margaret take a lot of court’s time and money.
Maybe the court should bill Mr. Corona and the other 26 lawyers, as
well as the three judges who allowed the enterprise to thrive.
Chester and Margaret are just trying to recover what was stolen from
them. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives them
the right to bring their grievances to the courts, including those
belonging to the federal judicial system.
Looking for Redress in Federal Courts
In general, “bill the judge” is not an option. No matter how wrong,
ill willed, and corrupt a judge is, it is pointless to sue a judge,
because judges enjoy absolute immunity from civil lawsuits, arising
from their judicial function.
However, absolute judicial immunity is not quite absolute. Although
the cloak of judicial immunity for centuries has shielded judges from
claims pertaining to actions they have taken in discharging their
official duties, a judge is not immune from liability for actions,
though judicial in nature, taken in complete absence of jurisdiction.
When Judge Berry issued a stay of the Salem District Court matter in
February 2002, which was not before her, she acted in complete absence
of all jurisdiction.
When Judges Stevens and DiGangi kept handling the cases which were
dismissed and pending on appeal, they also acted in complete absence
of all jurisdiction.
These are exactly the circumstances in which the law allows citizens
to “bill the judges” and their employers, the states, for damages
caused by them. This can be done under Title 42, Sections 1983, 1985,
and 1988 of the United States Code, as long as the deprivation of
constitutional rights was committed “under color of law,” by a state
actor, like a judge, for example, or any other state employee or
governmental official. To establish a governmental official’s personal
liability under 42 U.S.C. section 1983, it is enough to show that the
official, acting under color of state law, caused the deprivation of
some specific federal right.
Suing the Judges
Equipped with the powerful federal law, Chester and Margaret filed on
June 8, 2004, with the United States District Court, District of
Massachusetts their Title 42, 1983 claim against Judge Berry.
Two days after Judge Berry was formally served the verified complaint,
the case was dismissed by Judge George A. O’Toole, Jr., who allowed
Judge Berry’s motion to dismiss filed with the court on her behalf by
the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Thomas F. Reilly, but never
served on the plaintiffs. The motion was never served on the
plaintiffs, despite the fact that it contained a certificate of
service signed by Attorney Juliana deHaan Rice on behalf of Attorney
General, Thomas F. Reilly.
Chester and Margaret appealed the strange and informal dismissal to
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In their meticulously
researched brief, they presented their argument as to why Judge Berry
was not entitled to enjoy protection from liability under the doctrine
of judicial immunity. They also documented the puzzling chronology of
the U.S. District Court proceedings, as well as the fact that
authorities relied upon in Judge Berry’s motion to dismiss did not
have any bearing on the case against her.
After asking twice for an extension of time, the Office of the
Attorney General filed a non-conforming brief on May 10, 2005, and was
allowed by the Court to correct the errors and re-file the brief.
In the corrected brief, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly acting on
behalf of Judge Berry, misrepresented facts and advanced misleading
arguments.
In their reply brief, Chester and Margaret listed 15 instances of
material misrepresentations made in the brief filed on Judge Berry’s
behalf.
Despite the fact that each such misrepresentation constitutes a
separate instance of fraud on the court, on September 27, 2005, the
three-judge panel (Boudin, Selya and Howard) of the United States
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the U.S. District
Court’s decision of dismissal. Chester and Margaret filed their timely
petition for a hearing before the full Court of Appeals. Their
petition was denied on October 28, 2005.
Since the law and the rules of the court do not seem to apply to Judge
Berry, she could rest assured that she could get away with anything.
So could Judges Stevens and DiGangi, cases against whom were filed on
January 5, 2005. After following the same familiar routine (dismissal
based on defendants’ misrepresentations, appeal, and affirmation of
the dismissal) the cases were disposed of and conveniently labeled as
some more of “those” cases filed by “those” crazy pro se litigants,
who do not have anything better to do except to bother federal courts
with their imaginary grievances.
Despite the fact that all the plaintiffs’ pleadings filed in both
cases stated valid federal claims and met all legal and procedural
standards, and despite the fact that the defendants were not entitled
to enjoy the protection of judicial immunity, the federal judges
promptly dismissed the cases.
Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton dismissed the case against Judge Stevens on
June 13, 2005. The dismissal was upheld by the three-judge panel of
the Court of Appeals (Boudin, Stahl, and Lynch) on December 13, 2005.
Judge Richard G. Stearns dismissed the case against Judge DiGangi on
March 14, 2005. The dismissal was affirmed by the three-judge panel of
the Court of Appeals (Seyla, Lynch and Lipez), also on December 13,
2005.
In both cases, the plaintiffs’ petition for a hearing before the full
Court of Appeals was denied.
Suing Miss Meyers
The law is clear that even in cases where judges could legitimately
claim judicial immunity, other players who willingly align themselves
with the state actors and reach a “meeting of the minds” with them in
order to accomplish some ulterior purpose, can be held liable under
U.S.C. 42, section 1983, while having no right to claim any kind of
immunity whatsoever.
This legal concept was the basis for the federal action filed by
Chester and Margaret Chalupowski against Attorney Sharon D. Meyers on
June 1, 2005. The case was assigned to Judge Morris E. Lasker, said to
be an extremely fair and strict jurist.
Attorney Meyers, apparently, did not like Judge Lasker that much,
because, quite suddenly and without any notice to the plaintiffs, the
case was moved to the docket of Judge George A. O’Toole, who promptly
dismissed it on August 11, 2005. It is possible that Judge O’Toole,
after fixing the problem for Judge Berry, had a vested interest in the
quiet dismissal of the related case against Attorney Meyers. For
example, what if the plaintiffs decided, God forbid, to call Judge
Berry to testify, which the law allowed them to do.
The case followed the familiar routine: dismissal based on the
defendant’s misrepresentations, appeal, and affirmation of the
dismissal by the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the First Circuit.
To justify the desired result, the three judges (Lynch, Lipez and
Howard) misinterpreted the nature of the plaintiffs’ claim in their
half-page decision dated June 16, 2006.
Chester and Margaret’s petition for a hearing before the full Court of
Appeals was denied.
When their fourth federal case was dismissed in violation of the
applicable law, Chester and Margaret, by then quite versed with the
federal procedure, submitted 40 copies of their petition for a writ of
certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States. Their petition
was docketed with the Supreme Court of the United States on February
7, 2007.
Considering the odds of getting a case before the Supreme Court, which
takes about 80 cases a year out of the thousands submitted and
docketed, Chester and Margaret were not surprised that their petition
was not among the chosen ones.
After all, why would the Supreme Court of the United States wish to
hear about some embarrassingly notorious Massachusetts case involving
nine federal judges protecting three state judges, who have been
fostering a staged litigation scheme which is benefiting over two
dozens lawyers?
Fending Off Ongoing Attacks
While all the authorities and all the courts keep “playing possum,”
the resourceful group of lawyers keeps coming up with various
satellite enterprises in order to justify more payouts in purported
“attorneys’ fees,” as well as other “costs” and “reimbursements.”
The effect of the ongoing attacks is three-fold. First and foremost,
every single gesture, letter, phone call, meeting, court hearing,
etc., is a billing opportunity for at least two lawyers (it takes at
least two to communicate, after all). Second, measures need to be
undertaken in order to justify and sustain the smooth flow of money
from Mr. Metaxas to all of the compliant players. Also, it is
essential to keep steady the level of stress and uncertainty in the
psychological war against Chester and Margaret - the only people, who,
if not restrained, may cause problems for the schemers.
The result of this cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent
people is a protracted emotional and financial devastation, comparable
only to lynching. The entire Chalupowski family is suffering, except
for Donna, who, still unemployed, not only appears to be enjoying her
role in the scheme, but is also financially rewarded.
In or around January 2005, Anthony Metaxas gave Donna several thousand
dollars coming from Chester’s and Margaret’s assets. He also sends her
checks on a weekly basis, purportedly to cover Mary Jane’s expenses.
Nobody knows, however, how the money is actually spent.
Other fringe benefits received by Donna include a quiet dismissal of a
large number of criminal complaints pending against her at the Salem
District Court as a result of her violent, irrational, and antisocial
behavior, duly documented in the local police files for at least 20
years, and ranging from resisting arrest to assault and battery on her
86-year old mother. Last but not least is the ongoing help she has
been provided in sustaining her yearly ritual of renewing the
restraining orders, which are strategically important in the scheme.
The 209A Tool
Already in the summer of 2004, Attorney John D. Welch undertook steps
to make sure that, out of a dozen or so restraining orders obtained
throughout the years by Donna Chalupowski against almost every member
of her family, two are maintained and renewed regularly, since they
play a strategic role in the scheme.
As early as in 1990, Donna discovered that obtaining a restraining
order against a completely innocent individual is an easy, quick, and
cost-effective way of turning someone’s life into a living hell. When
Joseph Corona came into the picture in 1993, he quickly incorporated
the tool into the overall strategy of his main vexatious actions.
Therefore, Donna’s restraining order against Chester has been
carefully sustained throughout the years (mostly under the watchful
eye of the Chief Justice of the Salem District Court, Robert Cornetta),
which makes it one of the longest restraining orders in the history of
Chapter 209A of the General Laws of Massachusetts.
There was a very tangible tactical aspect of using the tool in the
scheme. Since Donna lives in one of the realty trust buildings,
Chester, the trustee, was prevented from entering the premises of the
trust, and this created an ongoing opportunity to blame him for not
doing a good job as a trustee. He was forced to perform his duties
through various agents, including his wife, Margaret. When Donna
realized that the arrangement gave Margaret an opportunity to develop
a close, caring relationship with Mary Jane, she immediately asked the
Salem District Court to “modify” the restraining order to include
Margaret as a defendant, which the District Court gladly did, despite
the fact that there was no legal or factual basis for such
modification.
In October 2004, Attorney John D. Welch took the “modification” to the
extreme and asked the District Court to transfer the 209A matter to
the Probate Court. Judge Stevens welcomed the matter on the Essex
Probate Court docket and, with no legal or factual basis to do so,
promptly issued a restraining order against Chester and Margaret,
preventing them from entering the trust’s premises and visiting Mary
Jane.
At the same time, the Salem District Court, as if unwilling to lose
the business, has kept issuing its own restraining orders in the
matter. Since the terms of the two orders (the Probate Court’s and the
District Court’s) differ slightly, Chester and Margaret, (mindful of
the fact that the violation of a restraining order is a criminal
offence), have not entered the premises of the trust since October
2004.
Why should they? Mary Jane, after all, is taken care of by a dozen
people, all of whom charge her for every word about her exchanged with
anybody. The bill is being paid from the funds stolen from her son and
his wife. Isn’t it a perfect arrangement?
Miss Meyers Wants More Money
Having pocketed almost $80,000, in November 2004, Attorney Sharon D.
Meyers all but abandoned her purported “ward,” Judith
Chalupowski-Venuto, until June 2006, when she found out that Chester
was appealing Judge Berry’s order in the contempt matter heard by her
in June 2004.
Judge Berry kept a low profile throughout the entire time when the
federal courts were handling the case brought against her by Chester
and Margaret. However, within days after the U.S. Court of Appeals
affirmed the dismissal of the case against her, Judge Berry decided to
take care of unfinished business, and on November 10, 2005, issued her
ruling in the contempt matter brought by Attorney Meyers in December
2003. Judge Berry found Chester in contempt of her August 6, 2002,
order (which she did not have a legal basis to issue), explained at
length how “telling” it was that Chester took the Fifth, and ordered
him to pay Attorney Meyers over $15,000 for her efforts.
Attorney Meyers wanted the money badly. Hence, when she found out that
Chester was appealing Judge Berry’s decision and filed his brief on
March 13, 2006, presenting a very comprehensive picture of the entire
scheme to the Appeals Court, Attorney Meyers panicked and filed with
the court a motion to strike Chester’s brief, which she found
“offending.” Well, when the truth is offending, do not blame the
bearer of the truth.
A motion to strike is an old trick often used by parties who have
nothing to say on the merits of the dispute. Why should Attorney
Meyers be bothered with addressing the merits of Chester’s brief, when
she can file a “motion to strike” and be done. Chester opposed the
motion to strike and asked the court to prevent Attorney Meyers from
interfering in the appeal, in which the only party who had standing to
oppose his appeal was his sister Judith. Judith did not have any
interest in opposing the appeal since she had nothing to gain by it.
The $15,000 awarded by Judge Berry was for Attorney Meyers, not for
Judith, who for three months had been medicated against her will in a
state mental hospital, so that Attorney Meyers could make fifteen
grand.
On February 27, 2007, a three-judge panel of the Appeals Court (Lenk,
Cowin and Graham) issued their unpublished Rule 1:28 order, affirming
Judge Berry’s decision, which meant that they agreed there was nothing
wrong with putting people in mental hospitals so that lawyers, who
were not even hired by them, could pay their bills.
Well, the three judges did not need to address this issue because they
conveniently granted the motion to strike the “offending portions of
the appellant’s brief,” and said that the rest of the brief was too
“vague” to figure it out. What’s so “vague” about fraud, lack of
subject matter jurisdiction, and erroneous as a matter of law ?
In addition, Attorney Meyers was invited by the court to submit her
motion for some more “attorney’s fees,” which she promptly did. When
Chester opposed her motion, she asked the court to “strike” his
opposition. The court gladly complied, and in this simple way,
Attorney Meyers made another $6,500 in her clever stunt implemented by
putting Judith Chalupowski-Venuto into the mental hospital for three
months, which brought Meyers’ total jackpot to over $100,000. Not bad.
Chester, still believing that the truth should prevail, filed his
Application for Further Appellate Review of the matter with the
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. The further appellate review
was denied.
The Grey Eminence Wants More Money
In August 2005, Attorney Metaxas, apparently running out of the
readily available cash, came up with a simple idea as to how to get
hold of the money still “tied up” in the two trusts, and filed a brand
new case against Mary Jane Chalupowski and her three children with the
Essex Probate and Family Court, in which he asked the court for a
permission to dissolve both trusts and to distribute the assets.
After all, there were a lot of various bills still “outstanding.”
First of all, Attorney Corona wanted the other half of “his” $95,000,
since in November 2004, Judge DiGangi, for some reason, slashed in
half the amount demanded by Corona and reflected by the promissory
notes signed by Donna.
Then, Attorney Meyers was still waiting for her $22,000 awarded her by
Judge Berry and the three-judge panel of the Appeals Court.
The guardian, Daniel Northrup and his crew (wife and other
associates), who received more than $75,000, never properly accounted
for, from Metaxas (supposedly to cover Mary Jane’s expenses) were also
running out of cash by the summer of 2005.
Then, there were a number of newcomers, e.g. Joseph Corona’s
successors, Joseph Collins and John Morris, and Marc Middleton, a
fellow telemarketer whom Judith met at one of her attempts at
employment, and whom she (abandoned by Sharon Meyers) hired on the
spot the moment she learned that he was a lawyer, struggling to make a
living in a somewhat related, albeit less lucrative, profession.
While the “village” of vultures feeding off the Chalupowski case has
been growing, the treasure keeper, Anthony Metaxas, has not forgotten
about himself and came up with a round figure for his “trustee
compensation,” despite the fact that the two trusts which he has been
allegedly managing have been producing no income whatsoever.
Metaxas has been very busy writing checks to various individuals,
including himself and other members of his law firm, (e.g. Attorney
Carlotta Patten); therefore he calculated that his time devoted to the
matter was worth about $70,000, not including other “fees” and “costs”
incurred while dealing with various problems created mostly by Chester
Chalupowski and his wife, Margaret, who were unwilling to accept the
fact that the game was over (for them). But for the lawyers, the game
was still in full swing, if they played it right, as long as they
could squeeze some more sizeable checks out of Chester’s and
Margaret’s lifesavings and Mary Jane’s $1,400 monthly Social Security
and GE pension checks.
Chester and Margaret, indeed, were not willing to accept the ongoing
parasitic relationship between their money and a growing group of
lawyers, and on September 15, 2005, Chester filed his motion to
dismiss Metaxas’ complaint on the grounds that Metaxas lacked standing
to bring any actions in his purported capacity as a trustee of the
Chalupowski trusts since he was using court orders which were void as
a matter of law in order to justify his standing.
After Judge DiGangi eagerly denied Chester’s motion to dismiss,
Chester and Margaret filed a number of pleadings, including a
counterclaim, Chester’s answer to Metaxas’ complaint, and Margaret’s
motion to intervene, all of which were dismissed (in violation of
court rules) by Judge DiGangi, who over and over again has been
finding it amusing that Chester and Margaret insist that law and the
rules of the court should matter in the Essex Probate Court.
Not discouraged by Judge DiGangi’s ridicule, Chester and Margaret
filed all necessary notices of appeal to preserve their rights, just
in case, at some point, law and the rules of the court would matter in
some other courts.
True to his reputation as an effective “terminator,” Judge DiGangi
ordered a trial on Metaxas’ petition for dissolution of the
Chalupowski trusts for late March 2006, while various, yet to be
addressed, matters were still pending.
By filing the brand new case, Metaxas pulled an interesting stunt,
which was, in fact, a classic example of lawsuit “laundering,” or that
of secondary staged litigation within the original staged litigation
scheme.
While the Probate Court did not have jurisdiction to handle the
matters still pending on appeal in May 2004, when Metaxas got his
precious, yet illegal, appointment, the Probate Court, technically,
now did have jurisdiction to handle the new case filed by Metaxas.
Obviously, there was still one problem: Metaxas did not have standing
to bring the new case, since he was deriving his right to sue from the
court orders which were invalid as a matter of law.
Hoping that a higher court would be smart enough to notice the trick,
Chester and Margaret asked the Appeals Court to issue an injunction
preventing Metaxas from using invalid court orders to justify his
standing and preventing the Essex Probate Court from acting on Metaxas’
petition for dissolution of the trusts.
When the Single Justice of the Appeals Court, Andre A. Gelinas (one of
the three judges who invented the ‘Gordian Knot’ excuse in 2004)
denied their request, Chester and Margaret turned to the Single
Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court. The Single Justice of the
Supreme Judicial Court, Francis X. Spina, also promptly denied the
request without a hearing. (Why spoil the fun? After all a group of
lawyers was waiting for “their” money.)
The Supreme Judicial Court Single Justice’s denial came, however, with
a standard note about the SJC Rule 2:21, which gives a 7-day window of
opportunity to reserve the right to present the issue to the full
panel (seven judges) of the SJC.
After jumping through all the procedural hoops, meeting all the
deadlines, and paying various fees, Chester and Margaret filed 9
copies of their Rule 2:21 Memorandum with the Supreme Judicial Court
on April 18, 2006.
Their 166-page Memorandum contained, among various exhibits, an audio
CD copy of the January 27, 2004, Probate Court hearing during which
Judge DiGangi, while handling the dismissed cases, after exchanging
some jovial jokes with Messers Welch and Tewhey says, “So tell me
guys, which case is a fair game here?”
Six months after filing their 2:21 Memorandum, Chester and Margaret
were notified on October 3, 2006, that their SJC appeal was allowed to
proceed. Therefore, on November 10, 2006, they filed seven copies of
their 20-page brief and a 320-page appendix with the Supreme Judicial
Court.
The appellate efforts undertaken by Chester and Margaret were
irritating Metaxas and all other players, who seemed to be unsure
whether finalizing the second heist while the appeal was still pending
before the SJC, was a good idea.
Nevertheless, the Essex Probate Court, having grown impatient, set a
date for the trial on Metaxas’ petition for February 14, 2007.
When Chester and Margaret asked the SJC to stay the Probate Court
proceedings, the SJC did not rule on their motion, but referred the
issue to the full panel and scheduled the oral argument for March 9,
2007.
Despite the fact that, technically, there was no order of stay, once
the news about the SJC’s intention to hear the appeal reached the
Essex Probate Court on the morning of February 14, 2007, quite
coincidently, the power went out in the courthouse, and “due to the
circumstances beyond the court’s control” the trial on Metaxas’
petition was cancelled until further notice.
The issue presented by Chester and Margaret for the consideration of
the highest court of Massachusetts on March 9, 2007, was simple: the
orders and judgments issued by the Essex Probate Court between 2002
and 2004 are void as a matter of law, since they were issued by the
court acting outside of its jurisdiction. A void judgment is a
complete nullity, which can furnish no basis for any subsequent
action, and can be attacked anytime, anywhere, by anybody, either
directly or indirectly. The matter does not have to go through the
regular appellate process because when a judgment is void, there is
nothing to appeal.
Mindful that the appellate avenue they were allowed to take is
reserved for only extraordinary circumstances, Chester and Margaret
carefully stated their points to make sure that the issue of lack of
subject matter jurisdiction and void judgments was correctly presented
and supported by citing all appropriate authorities.
The highest court of Massachusetts pondered what to do for a month,
and on April 11, 2007, issued its 3-page decision, which can be
summarized in three words, “let’s play possum.”
To avoid addressing the issue of lack of subject matter jurisdiction
presented in the appeal, the SJC used a simple linguistic trick and
said that the appellants, Chester and Margaret Chalupowski, complained
about some “improper” orders and judgments issued by the Essex Probate
Court. The SJC chose not to acknowledge that the central point of the
appellants’ argument was the issue of “void,” or “invalid” judgments.
The difference is not in semantics, but in law. An “improper” order is
a valid order, which can be appealed. A “void” order is a nullity,
which does not need to be appealed, because there is nothing to
appeal. The SJC did not want to address the issue of “void” judgments,
so it called them “improper.” Clever? Not quite. It is too obvious
that the SJC was simply covering the scheme to protect the judges and
the lawyers involved in it.
It is undisputable that the SJC was in a quandary. If the highest
court of Massachusetts ruled that it was OK for the Essex Probate
Court to handle cases which were dismissed and pending on appeal, such
a conclusion, apart from being legally wrong, would mean that
henceforward, any trial court in Massachusetts could keep re-trying
cases until the party favored by the court got the desired result. If
this were the case, there would not be any need for the courts at the
appellate level, or the entire appellate procedure for that matter. In
fact, the Appeals Court could be shut down and turned into, say, a
library.
On the other hand, if the SJC acknowledged the fact that the judgments
issued by Judge Digangi were void as a matter of law, the Judge would
be in trouble as a trespasser of law, and all the individuals who have
been paid as a result of his orders would have to return the money and
face serious disciplinary consequences. This is not to mention the
resulting scandal, which would be impossible to contain. The SJC,
obviously, could not allow this to happen, proving one more time that,
“with the Bench cozied up to the Bar, the lawyers can’t lose.”
This maxim appears true in Massachusetts, even if the lawyers commit
outright criminal acts and violate the rules of professional conduct
as they please.
*
After the SJC issued its April 11, 2007, opinion, the schemers, who
had been sort of nervous until then, could breathe a little easier and
more freely continue what they had been doing all along, which was
producing more and more elaborate “billing statements” and various
pleadings specifically designed to justify the exorbitant, albeit
unearned, sums of money they demanded.
What ensued was a virtual mud slinging competition. The one who can
write the most bad things about Chester and Margaret gets the most of
their money.