Petition for Writ of Prohibition - Stopa Law Firm

and the Court was not even aware it had been filed.14. On May 4, 2011, the Judge presided over a hearing on the Motion toVacate. During the hearing, Couch’s undersigned counsel argued that the Ordershould be vacated because of this sequence of events, as set forth above. Inparticular, Couch argued that it was patently unfair and a violation of due processfor the Motion to Dismiss to be denied when the Judge never had a hearing on theAmended Motion to Dismiss and never even reviewed the content thereof.Couch’s counsel also noted that the Order contained citations to arguments thatwere not contained in the Amended Motion to Dismiss, so it could not have beendirected to the Amended Motion to Dismiss.15. In response, the Judge told Couch’s undersigned counsel, in opencourt, that the Order may have been “inartfully” drafted but that the Judge hadreviewed the Amended Motion to Dismiss prior to entering the Order and intendedto deny it.16. The undersigned was, respectfully, quite upset. After all, the Judgecould not have reviewed the Amended Motion to Dismiss because, for unknownreasons, it had not been filed. 1As such, respectfully, the Judge had been caught in,at best, an inadvertent misrepresentation, or, at worst, an intentional one. As such,1 The undersigned has seen many instances of documents being inadvertentlymisfiled by clerks, presumably a result of the massive volume of cases with whichthey are dealing.4