New York, June 20 - Human Rights Alert (NGO) and Dr Joseph Zernik filed repeat requests with Mary L Schapiro - SEC Chair [1], Brian Moynihan - Bank of America Corporation President/CEO [2], and the Honorable Loretta Preska - US District Court, Southern District of New York Chief Judge, [3] to access public records - judicial records in SEC v Bank of America Corporation (1:09-cv-06829). Request was for the summons as well as the authentication records (NEFs) of all court minutes, orders, and the judgment in the case. Specific request was made for the authentication records of the February 2010 court records, which brought the case to its end - Opinion and Order and Final Consent Judgment. The authentication records (NEFs) are essential for determining the validity and effect of judicial records, which are today digital records, generated in the US courts' case management system - CM/ECF. Previous requests, which were filed with Bank of America, with SEC, and with the Court itself were denied with no explanation at all. The request filed by Human Rights Alert with the US District Court today invoked the First Amendment right to access judicial records - to inspect and to copy. The requests filed with SEC and Bank of America also invoked the inherent interest of Dr Zernik as a shareholder of Bank of America Corporation.
Human Rights Alert claimed that the ongoing refusal of all three parties to provide access to such public records, and other evidence as well, would lead a reasonable person to conclude that SEC v Bank of America Corporation (1-09-cv-06829) was likely to have been an invalid litigation and a pretense of enforcement of the law. The case itself was viewed as the hallmark of enforcement of regulation under the current banking crisis. It was extensively and repeatedly covered by main media outlets, such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. However, it was doubted that any media ever gained access to the authentication records, access to which was repeatedly requested by Dr Zernik for over half a year.
Conditions, prevailing at the US courts, were analyzed in detail in a scholarly paper, titled: Data Mining of the Online Judicial Records in the Networked US Federal Courts, [4] soon to be submitted by Human Rights Alert for international peer review.
The paper stated:
"... records obtained from multiple cases in various US courts across the United States documented the tight relationship between conditions at the US courts, and the current banking crisis. There simply is no way to institute honest and effective banking regulation absent honest enforcement at the US courts."
The paper concluded:
"The transition to digital administration entailed a sea change in procedures of the US courts. The transition took place over a relatively short time, was independently executed by the US courts through the Administrative Office of the Courts, under insufficient public and legal accountability. The transition resulted in precipitous deterioration in integrity of the courts, in human rights, and in enforcement by regulatory agencies in the United States."
Copies of the requests were filed with John Dugan - Comptroller of the Currency, with Chairs of the US Congress Banking and Judiciary Committees, with the Basel Accords Committee on international banking, and with various national central banks.
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Contact:
Joseph Zernik, PhD
Human Rights Alert
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LINKS AND ATTACHMENTS:
[1][2][3][4] Letters forwarded to SEC, Bank of America, and US District Court:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33310699/