Nader's legal efforts to get on the PA ballot are looking
pretty bad.
Using markedly critical language, the Commonwealth Court Thursday denied a motion filed by Ralph Nader's campaign in the ongoing litigation over the independent presidential candidate's attempt to get on the ballot in Pennsylvania.
The campaign had moved to strike the court's order this week scheduling hearings to examine tens of thousands of signatures on the petitions Nader filed seeking to secure his place on the November ballot [...]
The hearings begin Monday and are expected to address, petition line by petition line, challenges to the nomination papers containing thousands of signatures that the campaign filed this summer.
Under state election law, the campaign needs 25,697 valid signatures for Nader's name to appear on the ballot.
In Thursday's opinion, President Judge James Garner Colins singled out West Chester attorney Samuel C. Stretton, who has represented the Nader campaign, for filing a "duplicitous and disingenuous" pleading.
"In over 24 years of judicial service, this court has never encountered a pleading which has more misstated the facts and tortured the law as the instant" motion to strike, Colins began his opinion.
"Due to ecological concerns for the shortage of trees used in the production of paper, as well as the fiscal concerns for the incredible costs of this matter to the taxpayers of the commonwealth, I shall be exceptionally brief."
Ouch. Then, the lawyer who argued this case quit the campaign, claiming he isn't being paid by the Nader campaign. Its a juicy story, if you're interested in legal soap operas.