Florida Open Carry Lawsuit won last Friday. The Lawyers on both sides now want to Vacate the Win?!

Gun Owners of America, Inc. v. Pearson (2:24-cv-14250)

Many years ago, an old white-haired lawyer gave me free legal advice I will never forget. The first bit of advice is that lawsuits are not won on the merits. He said a lawsuit is won because the other side makes a fatal procedural error. The second bit of advice was, “Don’t correct the mistakes made by the other side.”

Today, I write briefly about a lawsuit in which the Gun Owners of America lawyers representing the plaintiffs violated that wise advice on both counts.

The Defendants in the Florida Open Carry lawsuit failed to respond to the summons. They had 21 days from the date they were served to either file their response or show good cause to the judge why they should be given an extension of time for failing to file the response on time. The plaintiffs did neither, so last Friday, a default judgment was entered against the defendants.

The lawsuit was won because of a fatal procedural error made by the Defendants.

Today, the Florida state attorney filed an untimely, defective, and unopposed motion to extend the deadline to September 18th. If the motion is granted, Friday's win will be vacated, the case will proceed, and the lawyers will presumably rack up a lot of billable hours they otherwise would not have should this lawsuit drag on for years, which is likely.

If the Court grants the motion, the plaintiffs’ attorneys will have successfully helped the State correct its mistake. Even if the motion is denied, the plaintiff’s attorney will nonetheless have helped the State in its attempt to correct its fatal procedural error.

As hard as it may be to believe, the State cites two provisions from the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding extensions of time, provisions why the district court judge (or clerk) should not grant the motion for an extension of time. The first requires that the request for an extension of time be made before the deadline; it wasn’t. The second provision requires that requests made after the deadline must show that the party that failed to file (the State in this case) did so out of excusable neglect.

The State’s unopposed motion for an extension of time does not give any reason, let an excusable reason, as to why the State failed to file a timely response.

Not giving any reason in the motion is another fatal procedural error made by the State by which the plaintiffs could have won had their attorneys opposed the motion.

The unopposed motion was signed by one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. I emailed both attorneys of record for the plaintiffs, asking them to explain why. As of this writing, late on Monday, September 9th, I have not received a reply. I do expect a reply. Likewise, I contacted the Gun Owners of America representative and asked him to explain why. I have not received, and do not expect, a reply from him either.

The defendants in my California Open Carry lawsuit, Charles Nichols v. Gavin Newsom et al., have made many fatal procedural errors in my nearly 13 years of litigation. My lawsuit is still standing only because I have not made any fatal procedural errors and because the ten virulently anti-Second Amendment judges assigned to my lawsuit over these past thirteen years have refused to hold the defendants accountable for theirs. Congress can easily correct this bad behavior by Federal judges but won’t because the people who elected them are ignorant, apathetic, and have long since lost their sense of smell.

Here is a link to the Florida Open Carry lawsuit, where the relevant filings can be viewed for free.