WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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One of the most common pro se reference questions we get at the law library is: “How do I sue someone?”

(It’s almost all civil here. SVU would have you believe there are many pro se criminal defendants, replete with zippy cross examination quips at the ready, but somehow that’s not what we see. The most common criminal question is how to vacate old convictions, which is on the criminal side, but isn’t, like, active, and the resources are so easily had that little time is spent there.)

On the civil side, “How do I get a divorce?” is probably the #1 seller. Nothing is as common as dissolution, what with the second law of thermodynamics etc. But honestly that is also extremely straightforward: the state provides the forms, the county provides form packets, and there’s much third party guidance.

“How do I sue someone?” Now that’s perhaps the second most asked question, and one far more interesting. What I hope to do here is provide a broad overview of KCLL’s resources to answer this very question.

I wrote the preceding section on September 20. It is now November 30. I intended this to be a concise guide, I really did. A short blog post! What an oaf I’ve been.

Instead, Microsoft Word says I’ve been working on this 22-page document for 996 minutes. 

Here is the initial kernel that sent me down this harrowing path, and perhaps the main takeaway from what is now an actual spiral bound guide book:

“You should buy our “Starting a Civil Lawsuit in Superior Court” form packet for $10 and follow its instructions. But, because you’re a savvy pro se litigant, you’ll notice that this form packet is extremely procedural, and because you’re so savvy, you probably want to learn the substantive basis of the journey you’re now beginning. Ask a librarian for reading recommendations for concepts you don’t understand. When it comes to drafting your Complaint, ask to see Amjur Pleadings Annotated and model your complaint off an existing template.”

So simple! But… what if they’re suing a business? Our packet doesn’t do that. What if they want to sue in KC District Court? What if they’re seeking a declaratory judgment?

It kept ballooning in scope, you see, and by the time declaratory judgments and injunctive relief entered my whirling mind, it made all the sense in the world to include them.

But now, I have a first draft of a guide that I’m comfortable sharing with my dear RRQ readers, and law library patrons who want to do some research before starting their civil action. 

You can see below that it is essentially an annotated bibliography. Each consideration for starting a suit (that I deemed worthy enough to include) has cited book chapters that speak to the topic. I tried not to speak substantively where I could, and instead pointed to external sources. 

Major shout out to Washington Practice, I’m definitely going to get Thomson Reuters’ logo tattooed on me one day. Also shout out to Pleadings and Forms Annotated, because the whole packet is intended to ultimately lead you there anyway. 

Please let me know your thoughts! Any topics you’d add or remove, verbiage or syntax you deem “grody,” let me know, because I want to keep improving this and ensure my effort was worthwhile. ross.zimmerman@kingcounty.gov 

Full file: HERE

You Want to Start a Lawsuit – Resources

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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I like when the seams start to show. This is something I’ve long noticed in myself – as an example, in high school, I became very into finding demo tapes of my favorite songs. I loved how raw and revealing demo recordings can be. What might eventually be throbbing bubblegum euphoria begins as a kind of plinky trancey gumbo – and I think that the latter gives a deeper appreciation to the former. Sometimes it’s the case where the stripped-down nature of a demo provides an intimacy and immediacy that a studio version simply can’t surpass, but I also often subscribe to the “first thought best thought” school. Many a demo tape have eclipsed my love for the studio version. 

I just reopened my browser – where was I going with that? Is this an indie rock blog now? I think that paragraph was going to be a simpler and less hyperlinked statement about how I like when the seams show, artistically, that it gives you a deeper understanding of the source, and that would somehow sensically set up how I feel like the seams are starting to show in REALITY and that, in this way, I DON’T like the seams showing. Let’s pretend I made that leap, and it was done well – thanks.

Yes, it was some weeks ago that the seams started to show in this ghastly plane.

It was Wednesday the 12th of July. I overhead a coworker talking to a customer about adverse possession. In my 41 months at the law library, I had yet to encounter this concept before, but I caught the gist of the situation and later debriefed with my coworker.

The following day, I was working in the Kent library. Kent is typically staffed by one KCLL employee at a time – sometimes Kent is a ghost town, but that day, I felt like a bartender barely keeping up. A line had formed, and routine family law and civil procedure wisdom was being dispensed. Sealing – GR 15! Free forms – Family Law Facilitators! Probate packet – sold! But then…

Adverse possession reared its head again. The customer said that she had long ago built a fence beyond her lot line, onto the HOA subdivision’s park. A new neighbor discovered this fact and was causing a fuss. The customer said they knew the law, she had statutes written down somewhere, and was generally set on her course of action – she merely came into the library to get the form that would get the title to the parkland. I whipped out the WSBA Deskbook on Real Property and began explaining that it wasn’t so easy, that there’s not one form that accomplishes this. She again said that she knew this was simple and she just needed the form, that someone upstairs (Kent’s library is located in the basement of the RJC – thus, it is not uncommon to receive inscrutable commands from above, there) had said she could get the form from us. I encouraged her to go back up and have them (Who? Unclear.)  write down exactly what she needed, because I wasn’t certain such a form existed. She left and did not return.

[Have I talked about forms on this blog yet? What an intriguing courthouse concept. The state/county provides some required legal forms, mostly in the arena of family law. Probate? No. General civil lawsuits? No. These you must draft yourself (or buy from a trusted form packet purveyor). But even in family law cases, certain forms are provided but others are not. Motion for Default? Yes. Motion for Reconsideration? No, you have to use the general motion and order templates and adapt as necessary. Even for sealing, as mentioned two paragraphs ago, the county provides an Order for Sealing but not a (required) matching Motion. Why!!!

People get it in their heads, though, that there are forms for any type of desired action (“a form to get my neighbor to trim his trees”), and I have to admit it’s a view that I don’t view as totally deluded. On one hand, what a delightfully absurd image! Row after row of filing cabinets, thousands of them, in sum containing forms that compel every action under the sun. On the other hand, if you’ve spent time understanding how absurd the court system is, maybe the idea isn’t so outlandish after all.]

Anyway, there isn’t a simple form I can hand someone that lets them claim parkland they’ve put a fence across. That’s a whole legal action, probably years of legal turmoil (even with an attorney).

Sometimes people come in asking for just a form, and the complicated answer might be about the concept of adverse possession, how there are elements that must be met (actual possession, open and notorious possession, hostility, continuous possession, and exclusive possession) and then, if these elements are met, there would be a quiet title lawsuit so the courts can declare who owns what, and eject the disseised, which is the legal term for the person who… but the simple and most apt answer is: we don’t have a form for that. That’s how I left it that busy day in Kent. But it was so odd, having just learned about adverse possession for the first time, then having another question about it the following day, so I resolved to read further into the topic.

I started pouring through the Washington Practice and WSBA Real Property Deskbook sections on adverse possession, as well as on quiet title actions. Pretty interesting stuff! Pretty complicated stuff! If I had to hazard a guess (which, thankfully, as a librarian, I never have to do), I’d say this is beyond the capacity of 99% of pro se litigants. I would never dissuade someone, though, I might simply preface their research by outlining the difficulties and urging legal counsel.

Such was my own research as it bled into the next week. Then, Tuesday, 7/18, again, the seams of this accursed prison of reality drew further into focus.

I answered a phone call. The caller had cared for and inhabited an adjacent lot for some time and was wondering how they could go about claiming it. “I believe what you’re describing is ‘adverse possession.'” My vision split into halftone reverberations, I looked down and saw the light bouncing off the WSBA chapter on adverse possession still open on my desk. That subsection said something about planting trees and how that plays into the criteria of actual possession. The caller offered that she had planted trees, shouldn’t that play into it? My synapses sent a signal, enzymes were excreted, I blinked. She asked if we had forms to accomplish this, I said no, that it was quite complicated, and that she should talk with a lawyer.

Baader–Meinhof. Words on a screen, words in a legal treatise.

I got home and described this all to my wife, who mentioned that someone in a local Facebook group was pursuing something similar – none of the circumstances overlapped, these were all unique operators.

Adverse possession has consumed my life. I now scroll through tacking apps, I sleep hostilely each night, and I grill and enjoy my backyard openly and notoriously. It’s all I know.

And as I kept digging, I found that AmJur Pleadings and Practice Forms has great templates for complaints and whatnot! Not a simple form that I can just hand over, but if someone wanted to go at it pro se, that is probably the best option, coupled with the Real Property Deskbook. 100 emoji.

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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While my life has occasionally eked into the “extraordinary,” something like 99.99% has fallen into the realm of “totally normal” and “mundane.” The brief jolts I’ve received in the way of novel experiences have shown me that I am a simple creature, a lover of the ordinary. So, why do I always have my head in the clouds? Since high school, I’ve been fascinated by philosophy—I’ve routinely moused away from school assignments and avoided social situations to read and use the field to overanalyze my very normal conditions. Matter of fact, even further back, since elementary school I’ve read advice columnists like “Dear Abby” daily in the newspaper, and aren’t advice columns a type of philosophy? “What is the best course of action?” “Am I in the wrong?” The routine questions of advice columns suggest that there is a definite moral order (often surrounding mothers-in-law). “Be as you wish to seem.” Socrates, or Miss Manners?

Is there a certain ethical pathway to life? I still can’t tell. I’ve read a great deal of philosophy, from Plato to Nietzsche (though, I DNF’d Critique of Pure Reason and Being and Nothingness – my postulation is that these guys needed to touch grass), and what I’ve landed on for personal application is some combination of Aristotelian ethics for the pursuit of happiness (I consider myself a quintessential blonde (glib, pleasant) and what could be more unsophisticated and straightforward than seeking virtue through practice? Be magnanimous, and… you’ll be magnanimous—”it does exactly what it says on the tin!”) and Hindu philosophy for epistemology and deciphering reality.

For the sake of today’s RRQ post, I wanted to appreciate how Hindu philosophy approaches ways of looking at the world and assigning importance to its happenings, and one striking concept in this way is that of pramanas.

Pramanas are the paths to what is deemed “correct knowledge.” How can you be certain that what you know is valid? There are six pathways to knowledge in Hinduism:

1. Perception – direct sensory experience
2. Inference – applying prior fact patterns (“if there is smoke, there must be fire”)
3. Comparison/Analogy (“an alligator seems like a crocodile, so I must be careful”)
4. Postulation – extrapolation from facts (“RJ oversleeps on all the days that end in Y, he must oversleep every day”)
5. Non-perception – can the lack of something prove something?
6. Testimony of experts

More or less copied from the Wikipedia article, there. Maybe you should just read that… and if you did, you would have read that different Hindu schools accept different combinations of these as valid routes to knowledge. One holds perception alone as a valid, another accepts all six. Most are somewhere in between. I’m not of one mind on this, but more often than not, I’m a Samkhya guy who values only perception, inference, and expert testimony. That said, I can see how certain pramana, in certain contexts, could be seen as acceptable, and moreover I’m simply happy to have a system by which to weigh such epistemological concerns.

There isn’t a ref q here, sorry, the point of this column is this: I (mostly jokingly) wondered if one could use the Rules of Evidence as an epistemology of its own, and in thus pondering, I’ve been weighing the ERs against the pramanas. What is a valid presumption? Who can you trust? As far as philosophy goes, the ERs are about as dry and stuffy as the rest, but the thought has tickled me of some devout neophyte emphatically clutching their volume of Tegland & Turner. Yet it’s an idea I’ve returned to often: What if we, as a society, could reject spiritual dogma, and join to embrace ER 101 – ER 1103?

Some of the pramanas port over easily enough. If we were relayed some fact via hearsay, should we say we know it to be true? This is rejected by the pramanas and under Title 8 of the ERs. Or, if we consider the testimony of an expert, is that valid knowledge? Look no further than Title 7 of the Rules of Evidence: Opinions and Expert Testimony. The Supreme Court rulemaking process has already settled this aspect of epistemology.

What about some synthetic proposition we heard? Can we make an inference based on a postulation? Some Hindu schools would say yes, some no… and Title 3 re: Presumptions wasn’t adopted, so you’re in the woods there. Check case law, cenobite.

So which pramana has a direct ER corollary?

1. Perception – direct sensory experience ✅ Title 6: Witnesses
2. Inference – applying prior fact patterns (“if there is smoke, there must be fire”) ❌  ̶ ̶T̶i̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶3̶ ̶P̶r̶e̶s̶u̶m̶p̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶
3. Comparison/Analogy (“an alligator seems to be like a crocodile, so I must be careful”) ❓ Title 4: Relevancy (it depends!) ✅ Rule 901: Requirements of Authentication
4. Postulation – extrapolation from facts (“RJ oversleeps on all the days that end in Y, he must oversleep every day”) ❌ Nothing specific?
5. Non-perception – can the lack of something prove something? ✅ Rule 602 speaks to witnessing what didn’t happen ✅ Rule 803: Hearsay Exceptions
6. Testimony of experts ✅ Title 7: Opinions and Expert Testimony

I’m not a lawyer – ER stuff is complicated! Some of this boils down to “it depends,” but indeed some of the pramanas appear to have some basis in evidentiary law.

An issue arises in taking the Rules as gospel, though, and truly a lot of philosophy and religion is like this, where it can get ouroboros-y. For example:

Rule 401 “Relevant evidence” means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.

Is that helpful? To determine if the wind is cold to Theaetetus, we must consider observations which probably lead to that determination? Uh, duh?

Several other interpretations must be made, too. Cognitively, foundationally: who is the trier of facts? Prakriti (the material universe, including the mind) as judge, and purusha (pure consciousness) as jury? Juries are indeed vetted to be independent of the world of the case, and they blossom into being to inspect the material world, only to disassemble, yet foundationally they persist. And you could argue that judges are something like prakriti, in that, like the mind, they are arbiters but still very much part of the system. This is fun to consider, but the necessary level of interpretation suggests that perhaps the ERs weren’t intended to comport with three-thousand-year-old Indian epistemology. 

The larger point in which this falls apart is that the ERs detail the burdens in producing evidence, and the admissibility of relevant vs. irrelevant evidence—so as a guide, the ERs might allow us to mull certain topics, but it doesn’t really point a way forward in saying what is “true.”

Would Pattern Jury Instructions help, could that be our dogma? A bit too narrow, unless you’re regularly discerning if there was fraud or outrage (I am). But anyway, jury instructions are just that—the power of discernment is still baked into our trier of facts, our individual jurors, or neurons, or whatever.

I think this is a good place to call it. When I first started writing this, the aspects of the argument that I couldn’t quite nail down suggested a depth that I’m now seeing as indeed more of a dearth. If the comment section were capable of being deployed, I would have greatly enjoyed your insights, dear reader. Next month is a bye month – talk soon.

 

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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Ed. Note: RRQ Nation has spoken – comments are enabled! 

Ed. Note #2: Comments require a log-in… boo! Comments are disabled. 

This is going to be a short one!

What I intended for this month is being pushed to next—it’s something I’ve had in mind for a while re: epistemology at the law library, but it’s already 12 paragraphs long and I haven’t really reached a thesis. It might end up being a bit of a Kinder egg, like me: appealing and sweet, but ultimately hollow. Stay tuned!

I just got this question: Are the RCWs protected by copyright?

On its face, I want to say, NO. Because how could they be? But of course, we shy away from off-the-cuff Yes/No answers, and perhaps it’s not so straightforward…

I fired up copyright.gov and clicked through these pages:

• What is copyright?
• Copyright basics
• Works Not Protected by Copyright

Ctrl+F for “law” “laws” “statutes” etc. (not helpful when investigating copyright “law,” hmm) reveals nada.

This page says that copyright “does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something,” which, that sounds a whole lot like the law but they won’t come right out and say it!

We don’t see a lot of federal stuff here—my beloved Washington Practice, WSBA deskbooks -worthless! So, I head on over to old google.com and search “are state laws protected by copyright,” which I acknowledge is a genius-tier move. Mercifully there was a Wikipedia page that discusses this very issue, complete with case law and USC citations.

When I was in high school, Wikipedia broke through as a major resource, but as students we were discouraged from using it at all – “anybody can edit it!” Nowadays, I don’t think that Wikipedia is some bogeyman from which librarians should shy away, nor is it the end of the line, research-wise. I think of it as a valid jumping off point. Check out the references, click on the citations, check the cases in Westlaw! That is, the customer should do all this—to me, my emailing them the Wiki link (and some context) constituted my walking away from this query.

One last thing about this question is that it was framed as a hypothetical: the classic case of two buddies resolving a bet. I shared the above information just as if there was active litigation, so it’s not like I dismissed it, but there’s something in me that flinches when questions of this nature come in, and I can’t decisively say why.

One angle is that while we’re open to the public, we are a “special library” – you have to be doing legal research to physically use our space. But it’s true that this is legal research… and then some part of me wonders, “to what degree does it matter if it’s real?”

What makes a case or a legal question “real?”

It’s not a likelihood of a court win, as to operate by that standard would be unjust and impossible to determine anyway. Indeed, there are folks who come into the library in the throes of mental crisis, and their questions are often nonsensical, but ultimately, as librarians, we do try and answer as best we can. And, like this question, these are often interesting legal questions! So, to a large degree, we have to take each reference question as it comes and respond to it on its face, without thinking of its reality-based utility or outcome.

The question “what makes something real?” —is it worth considering at all? Perhaps my forthcoming column on epistemology in the courthouse will shine some light on this!

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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Hey! I started writing this monthly blog a year ago now. What a year it’s been: 365 days, 52 weeks, four seasons – the whole shebang. And so many delightful ref q’s. Now, in that time, I haven’t received an iota of feedback, and it’s possible I’m typing away into the void, but isn’t that the nature of anything? If this blog had won the Pulitzer (which I still can’t believe I was robbed of this first year—it still stings), wouldn’t that voice still be whispering in my ear, “memento mori?” No? Oh.

A year of ref q’s! Some of these require me going through old notes or sent emails, trying to capture something thoughtful that fits the gist of the blog. Other times, a Q stays with me, and I have no say in investigating further – such is the case this month.

Someone emailed saying they were looking for a “form to withdraw my motion.” No further information was provided. The way I interpreted that was, a motion was submitted, it had not been heard by a judicial officer, and maybe it hadn’t even been served on the other party. Simply, a motion was filed, and the emailer came to immediately regret it, and want to hit “undo.” Surprisingly, I have no recollection of having received this Q before, and my coworkers said the same. The way forward wasn’t obvious.

The first route to explore was Rule 15 (Amended and Supplemental Pleadings). We’re used to getting Q’s about amending pleadings, and if you squint, that’s kinda what the person wants… But not really. They wanted to take a whole motion and amend it to say “nvm.” Does that count?

After searching the Washington Practice chapters on Pre-Trial Motions and also Pleadings, and then talking with my colleagues, this seemed like unfortunately the best route. CR 7 (Motions) and CR 10 (Pleadings) don’t address retractions, withdrawals, or whatever else you’d call this. But sometimes the rules don’t address something seemingly obvious, so practitioners need to grab onto something, anything tangentially related. I let the emailer know that this was a surprisingly uncommon ask, and that CR 15 is the closest thing with which we could come up.

This was weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to shake the idea that this Q remained unanswered. It’s true that with The Law, perfect solutions are in short supply, but all the same, I couldn’t get over it. There seemed to be two tandem goals:

1. I wish I hadn’t submitted this motion – CTRL +Z.
2. I regret making this motion and don’t want it to take effect.

(1) is a fairly straightforward “not gonna happen.” Once you submit something to the clerk’s office, it’s theirs and public record (short of sealing the file, which is not a given in any situation). They are literally not going to hand it back.

So, the effort seems to boil down to stopping the motion from taking effect, and ASAP. Because of course the emailer could dutifully serve the other party and attend the hearing, to only then say “nvm” but that is weak sauce and obvious. “It’s my motion, and I want to withdraw it now!”

Other ideas swirled around my noggin. Could you use a motion to strike (CR 12(f))? These are technically a defensive maneuver, but couldn’t you ask the court to strike your own motion as “immaterial?” It’s somewhat silly, and nothing in Washington Practice suggests this is even a possible path, but I couldn’t find enough to rule it out.

Could you contact the clerks or the bailiff and ask to cancel the motion hearing? If there is no set time for the motion to be heard, it won’t be! It will sorta just float away in the judicial aether, right? So far this seems the most straightforward and quick approach. But what if there was an even easier way?

I did something unusual and walked across the hall to the Superior Court Clerk’s Office and asked around. After some bouncing around, I was told the emailer could file a Motion to Vacate Ex Parte Via the Clerk. I reiterated that there isn’t a signed order, there is just a submitted motion, but the clerk stuck with their answer and I went on my way. This didn’t seem correct- CR 60 is titled “Relief from Judgment or Order” and the emailer has neither a judgment nor an order. Section (c) of CR 60 does technically say, “This rule does not limit the power of a court to entertain an independent action to relieve a party from a judgment, order, or proceeding.” Emphasis mine. But in reading through the entirety of Washington Practice – Rules Practice on CR 60, usage for this purpose is not even slightly addressed. My more tenured colleagues dismissed this idea out of hand.

I began to feel like Quinn in Auster’s City of Glass, but instead of waiting in an alleyway for Stillman, I was looking at the Westlaw homepage, with the cursor blinking in an empty search bar. How could such a simple question not have a simple answer? Was the cursor blinking in morse code, “yr dumb?”

Finally, with weeks gone by, I reached out to local attorney Rosemarie LeMoine, who has volunteered with the library on a number of webinars and videos. I don’t want to exhaust our volunteer attorneys’ goodwill with every silly question I have (I have many), but as someone who whittles away his hours counseling others, “you need legal advice from an attorney,” I figured I would get some legal advice of my own.

Her answer… you simply contact the commissioners’ email address (family law) or the bailiff (general civil cases) and ask them to strike the motion! Of course, you have to CC the other party, but just like that… you ask them to strike it! And then, it’s stricken! Beautiful.

None of the books I consulted nor the veteran courthouse employees I spoke with suggested that this was a possibility. It took talking to a seasoned attorney (a million thanks to Rosemarie) to know that emailing a commissioner/bailiff to strike a motion is even an option. This is probably common knowledge for actual practitioners, but for the pro se’s and other outsiders (like librarians), it’s impossible to discern.

It’s been that folks have approached the reference desk wanting to know a court rule, but in seeing the Civil Rules or Local Family Law Rules, they’ve lowered their voice and said, “Isn’t there something else?” Another way to achieve X, Y, or Z. And I’ve replied confidently, “There are no secret rules.” But now I wonder, what other pathways remain hidden? It’s often the case that the more complex a reference question seems, the simpler its answer must be, but do all the simple questions require some arcane knowledge? What else remains obscured? Tune in next month for another Ross’ Req Q’s to find out!

 

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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Happy new year! 2023 – doesn’t that seem excessive? That’s a lot of years. But it’s February now, which marks my third year of employment at the law library. Now that’s cause for celebration.

Today’s ref q is notable because it features the technique of using procedure meant for the opposing party as a guide. When the resources are paltry for the responding side (often for changes to parenting plans, or responding to a protection order), it is often beneficial to read instructions meant for the petitioner, and in those shadows and gaps we can discern how best to respond. Today we return to property law.

Someone called in asking what to do about the lien on their house. They said it had been ten months and they wanted to remove the lien. Well, that makes sense. Like an itch at the center of your back, when we think of liens at all, the idea is to be relieved of them.

Prior to this interaction, here is what I knew about liens: they are attached to your property via the Recorder’s office, they are a mar on the title, and I knew of a good resource to recommend for those claiming a lien- but not one for those on the receiving end. 

My first instinct, as usual, was of dumb misunderstanding. Well of course they want the lien removed, did they pay the contractor? No, but ten months had passed. I didn’t follow – weren’t liens more or less permanent? Isn’t that their whole deal? Weren’t liens supposed to make selling your house more difficult? HUH?

I didn’t have a good understanding of how liens work! Not aware of resources for the property owner, I opened up that BIAW How-To and read all the way through. The last paragraph states:

Your lien will survive for eight months after recording, unless before the eight months is up, you choose to bring a lawsuit to foreclose on the lien or file a Release of Lien or Conditional Release of Lien.

8 months? Could that be right? I checked Washington Practice: Creditor’s Remedies and Debtor’s Relief, which pointed me to statutes: it was right. The lien lives for eight months, in which time the claimant can force a foreclosure to be paid- but after 8 months, that threat goes away.

In that way, the lien is perpetual. If it’s not removed, it stays on the deed. It just can’t be enforced. But other sources state that this serves the claimant as well. Of course, if the bills have been paid up, the lien should be released (or the claimant can be rightly sued) – but if not, the lien, enforceable or not, lives on at the Recorder’s Office- clouding the title to some degree, So the owner may still be induced to pay up, though the lien can’t force the owner into foreclosure. But the flip side is that the owner may have rights to sue the claimant to remove the lien.

So, to me, the situation necessitates removing the lien – perhaps the contractor will fill out a Release of Lien form, or perhaps the homeowners should sue. But the important thing is to use whatever resources you have at your disposal, and fill in the gaps as best as you can.

WE GET A LOT OF REFERENCE QUESTIONS AT THE KING COUNTY LAW LIBRARY.

THE REFRAIN GOES THAT BECAUSE WE AREN’T PRACTICING ATTORNEYS, WE CAN’T OFFER LEGAL ADVICE—AS LIBRARIANS, WE CAN ONLY OFFER RESOURCES.

THAT SAID, SOME QUESTIONS ARE VERY INTERESTING & INSPIRE ME TO DO SOME RESEARCH OF MY OWN, COLLECTED HERE IN THIS COLUMN. DON’T CONSTRUE THIS AS LEGAL ADVICE!

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It’s Ross’ Ref Q’s – part cinq!

Fun note: The library’s stacks have been reopened to the public and word has seemingly gotten out—we’re getting a number of great reference questions at the desk, and overall it’s thrilling to see folks emerge from the stacks, heavily laden with books and grinning like the proverbial kid in a candy shop. Come by and see us!

Today’s question didn’t come from an in-person question, though, but from a phone call. The backstory went that the caller was finding their way through a TEDRA action (probate dispute) and the court had ordered mediation. Due to [reasons] the caller felt mediation didn’t go their way and wanted to know what options they had:

What agency regulates mediation services? Is there an appeals process?

ADR is a topic I know very little about, so I asked them to email us so I could respond with links and attachments. Email is preferred for these reasons: giving us time to answer, and the ability to send materials ie not read aloud from treatises.

I know for parenting plans and the like that you might be ordered to go to ADR before returning to the courts, but with their processes being largely outside court rules and statutes, my knowledge quickly runs out. I was aware of the King County Dispute Resolution Center, but it had never occurred to me that an authority might regulate them.

The KCDRC website was a bust. They have staff emails listed, including that of their Executive Director, but my caller wasn’t simply trying to speak to the manager. We were looking for procedure…

I found the chapter of the RCW that authorizes the use of Dispute Resolution Centers, but that too was off base-nothing spoke to their regulation.  RCW 7.75.060 says,

“Any person who voluntarily enters a dispute resolution process at a center established under this chapter may revoke his or her consent, withdraw from dispute resolution, and seek judicial or administrative redress prior to reaching a written resolution agreement.”

But that too wasn’t on-point. The caller had reached an agreement, but one they seemingly wished to appeal.

I opened Washington Practice in Westlaw and searched the entire series for “Alternative Dispute Resolution” and scanned through the many results. A promising chapter came from the Family and Community Property Law volume, which spoke to the mediation beyond the family law context. In particular, chapter §53:2 says,

“Mediation is essentially a contractual undertaking and is relatively free of regulation. The Uniform Mediation Act (“UMA”) provides some limited standards and protections for mediation matters. All mediations, including those required by statute or court rule, are governed by the UMA.”

Emphasis mine. Knowing about the UMA, I felt assured that if there were some authority regulating mediators, it would be found there. Small win.

But I hadn’t been approaching the process from a distinctly TEDRA angle, and I felt there was a resource yet untapped. I searched the TEDRA section of Washington Practice’s Probate Law and Practice, and although there is a section on ADR, it’s not a slam dunk procedurally-speaking.

I then thought to check the WSBA Deskbook on Estate Planning, as I remember reading about the TEDRA petitioning process there, maybe six months prior. And lo, a step-by-step, procedural chapter greeted me, complete with a chapter (§13.8) all about the escalation of mediation to arbitration, and appealing from arbitration to superior court. Bingo! I emailed them a scanned copy of this chapter as well as the Community Property chapter (I liked the section explaining the lack of regulation) and a link to the UMA.

So I learned a lot about the Uniform Mediation Act, about ADR under TEDRA, and specifically which resources to grab straightaway next time. And this question also shows the importance of emailing your questions! If I had tried to corral these texts and locate authorities on the phone, I’m sure my responses would have been far less comprehensive. There is a time and a place for asynchronous communication, and legal research is certainly one of them.