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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5778 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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I definitely agree that stalling things out and slow walking your actions can be scummy behavior, but whether or not that fits contempt of court can be highly contextual and dependent on the ground level specifics.

This falls into the third type of example I gave in the original comment! The Trump admin slow walked the return of Abrego Garcia for months. Maybe we can argue that it's contempt from the spirit of the law and were behaving in a scummy manner, but they never once committed any actually legal contempt. You are allowed to draw out a case even if you think you will probably lose, because you might win and you can exercise a full fight.

If they had responded to the original motion and the court held a hearing and determined that the order was still in effect, I'd support your position that the AG is acting in bad faith and deliberately disobeying it. It's quite a different thing if the AG takes a position that a motion isn't necessary but gives you the opportunity to have your day in court anyway, and your response is to ignore him and then try to get sanctions later. This is the kind of behavior that pisses off judges.

Same thing, they're allowed to slow walk or whatever if they want (within some amount of behavior obviously), but we can also agree it's scummy to try to lie and claim the AG is in contempr when you just ignored them.

To be clear, my argument that it isn't contempt isn't that the plaintiffs did something scummy, but that intervening legislation mooted the order. Suppose A sues B because B built a structure that doesn't conform to setback requirements in the zoning ordinance, and the court issues and order that B demolish the structure within 90 days. If within that 90 days the municipality changes the zoning ordinance so that the structure now conforms to the setback requirements, the issue is mooted. You can ask that the court vacate the order, but as a strategic matter it's probably better to ignore it since there's no reason to incur additional legal fees if you don't have to. Wait for A to sue you for contempt and lose; no judge is going to impose sanctions in a case like that.

The one thing I will say about the plaintiff's failure to respond is that, theoretically at least, their non-response turned the state's motion into an unopposed motion, and while there's no mechanism akin to a default, they could have just submitted it to the court for a judge's signature, and he could have granted it regardless of the merits of the case. Realistically the judge will probably schedule a hearing, and only automatically grant the motion if the plaintiff fails to respond after being noticed, but it is something that can happen. Most of the unopposed motions I file, including motions for summary judgment that get us out of a case entirely, simply go to the judge without a hearing. But those are motions where the opponent has already told us they don't plan on opposing it, because most lawyers actually respond to our motions, and even if they don't, we deal with the same lawyers all the time and prefer to maintain cordial relations with them. But I'd have no problem being aggressive if it's some out of state firm that's being dickish and I don't care how much I piss them off.

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