In the last status update, I explained why this is no longer just an old lawsuit.
The same judgment I have been writing about is now being enforced against my family’s daily life.
My daughter’s vehicle.
My wife’s property interests.
My tools.
My ability to work.
So now I need to move faster through the record.
Not recklessly.
But faster.
Because at a certain point, this stopped being only a story about Valeo.
It stopped being only a story about Valeo’s lawyers.
It became a story about what the court allowed.
This is that point.
The Rule
Indiana has a rule for when a judge does not rule on submitted motions within the required time.
It is Trial Rule 53.1.
Some people call it the “lazy judge” rule.
The basic idea is simple:
If a judge does not rule within the required time, the case can be withdrawn from that judge.
That rule matters because on July 21, 2017, Judge Welch held a hearing on multiple pending motions.
Valeo’s Motion for Summary Judgment.
Valeo’s Motion for Discovery Sanctions.
My Motion for Leave to Amend.
Other related issues.
The court took the matters under advisement.
That meant the clock mattered.
And once the clock mattered, the procedure mattered.
Who Was Supposed to Decide?
The published Indiana court guidance explained the procedure.
A party files a praecipe, or notice, with the clerk.
The clerk records the date and time.
The clerk enters it in the Chronological Case Summary.
The clerk forwards the praecipe and the CCS to the Chief Administrative Officer of the Indiana Supreme and Appellate Courts, not the trial court.
Then the Chief Administrative Officer decides whether withdrawal is warranted and issues a ruling.
That is the important part.
The trial judge does not decide whether her own case should be withdrawn from her.
That makes sense.
A judge should not be the final decision-maker on whether that same judge failed to rule in time.
That decision goes elsewhere.
What Happened Here
After the deadline passed, I filed my Trial Rule 53.1 request.
I was asking for the case to be transferred for appointment of a special judge.
The request was based on the court’s failure to rule within the required time after the July 21 hearing.
Then something happened that should not have happened.
Judge Welch denied the request herself.
On August 31, 2017, she entered an order titled:
Order Denying Defendant’s Application for Transfer of Cause to the Supreme Court for Appointment of a Special Judge
But the order did not say the Chief Administrative Officer had denied it.
It did not say the Supreme Court had denied it.
It was Judge Welch’s order.
And it denied the request as untimely under Trial Rule 76(B).
That was not the rule I invoked.
I had filed under Trial Rule 53.1.
So there were two problems at once.
The wrong decision-maker.
And the wrong rule.
[Insert screenshot of August 31 order denying TR 53.1 request under Trial Rule 76(B).]
That was the moment the court became part of the story.
I Asked Her to Correct It
I filed a Motion to Correct Error.
The point was not complicated.
I had filed under Trial Rule 53.1.
The published procedure said the clerk should forward the praecipe and CCS to the Chief Administrative Officer.
The decision was supposed to come from the Chief Administrative Officer.
But Judge Welch had ruled on it herself.
By then, I had also contacted the Supreme Court Clerk’s Office.
The response I received said the appellate docket did not show receipt of the appropriate documents from the trial court for a Trial Rule 53 request.
So I asked the trial court to correct the problem.
Judge Welch denied that too.
On September 12, 2017, she entered another order.
This time, she denied my Motion to Correct Error and said my Trial Rule 53.1 application was filed after judgment on the underlying motions had been entered.
But that still left the same problem.
The issue was not only whether she thought the request was late.
The issue was whether she was the one allowed to decide it.
The procedure said the Chief Administrative Officer decided withdrawal.
Judge Welch decided it herself.
Then, when I objected, she decided it again.
Then a Higher-Court Document Appeared
After that, a new document appeared.
It was titled:
Notice of Chief Administrative Officer’s Determination Pursuant to Trial Rule 53.1(E)
This time, the document appeared to come from the Chief Administrative Officer of the Indiana Supreme Court.
It said withdrawal of the case from Judge Welch was not warranted.
On its face, it had a file stamp:
September 7, 2017 — 4:30 p.m.
At first glance, that might seem to solve the problem.
If the Chief Administrative Officer denied withdrawal on September 7, then maybe the issue was over.
But the timing did not make sense.
Judge Welch had already denied my correction motion on September 12.
And the higher-court record later showed notice and transmission activity on September 20.
So the document raised a question I could not ignore:
If this had already been decided by the Chief Administrative Officer on September 7, why was Judge Welch still denying the issue herself on September 12?
And why did the higher-court record show later activity?
The Date Problem
The Chief Administrative Officer notice appeared to carry a file stamp of:
September 7, 2017 — 4:30 p.m.
But the PDF metadata showed something different.
The PDF was created on:
September 19, 2017.
It was modified on:
September 20, 2017.
And the visible annotation in the file showed a manual file-stamp entry by user abarnes on:
September 20, 2017 — 11:59:33 a.m.
That is the problem.
A PDF cannot be manually file-stamped before the PDF exists.
Maybe there is some explanation.
Maybe someone can explain the court’s process.
But the sequence still matters.
Because this was not just any document.
This was the document that appeared to solve the problem created when Judge Welch denied a Trial Rule 53.1 request herself.
Judge Welch denied it.
I asked her to correct it.
She denied correction too.
Then a Chief Administrative Officer notice appeared with an earlier date.
So the issue is not just metadata.
The issue is what the metadata was attached to.
A later-created higher-court document appeared to supply the missing answer to a procedural problem the trial judge had already created.
The Simple Sequence
Here is the simple version.
July 21, 2017: Judge Welch heard the pending motions and took them under advisement.
After the deadline passed: I filed a Trial Rule 53.1 request.
August 31, 2017: Judge Welch denied the request herself, under Trial Rule 76(B).
After that: I asked her to correct the error.
September 12, 2017: Judge Welch denied correction too.
September 19, 2017: the PDF metadata shows the Chief Administrative Officer notice was created.
September 20, 2017: the PDF metadata shows it was modified, and the visible annotation shows manual file-stamp activity.
But the document itself carried a September 7 file stamp.
That is the sequence.
And the sequence matters.
Because this was not just any procedural issue.
This was the issue of whether Judge Welch still had authority to keep the case.
Why It Mattered
This was not a harmless procedural issue.
By this point, the record already had serious problems.
Valeo had not produced a signed Compensation Agreement.
Valeo’s own Employment Agreement said the complete agreement included the Compensation Agreement.
The wage-fine issue had been boxed away.
The 2010 Employment Agreement and 2010 Compensation Agreement used at summary judgment were unsigned.
The summary-judgment PDFs had been generated from the same Word document days before the filing.
And after I inspected the documents in person, Valeo’s lead attorney admitted there was no signed Compensation Agreement.
So when the Trial Rule 53.1 issue arose, it was not happening in a clean case.
It was happening at the exact point when the case could still have changed direction.
A different judge might have looked at the missing Compensation Agreement differently.
A different judge might have allowed me to amend my answer.
A different judge might have considered the wage-fine evidence.
A different judge might have required Valeo to prove the complete agreement before enforcing it.
A different judge might have denied summary judgment.
Or dismissed the case entirely.
That is why the rule mattered.
If Judge Welch no longer had authority to keep the case, then the question was not whether she should rule for Valeo or for me.
The question was whether she could still rule at all.
And if the higher-court document appeared only after the trial judge had already denied the request herself, then the timing was not a technicality.
It went to the foundation of everything that followed.
The Vortex
This is the image I want readers to keep in mind.
A small case at the surface.
A supposed removal-fee dispute.
A claim that started around $37,000.
But underneath it, something kept pulling more people in.
First Valeo.
Then its lawyers.
Then the court.
Then the court administration overseeing all Indiana courts.
At each stage, the question becomes harder to avoid:
Why would so many people take so much risk over so little money?
That is not a conclusion.
It is the question the record keeps forcing.
What Changed Here
Up to this point, readers could still think this was mostly about Valeo and its attorneys.
The wage reductions.
The missing Compensation Agreement.
The hidden video.
The summary-judgment exhibits.
The same Word document.
But the Trial Rule 53.1 issue changed the story.
The court had a rule to follow.
The published procedure put the decision with the Chief Administrative Officer.
Judge Welch denied the request herself.
When I asked her to correct it, she denied it again.
Then a higher-court document appeared with an earlier date and later electronic activity.
That is when the vortex reached the court.
And once that happened, the question was no longer only:
What did Valeo do?
The question became:
What did the court system allow?
Part 18 will explain what that left me with:
A judgment I believed the court had no authority to enter.
A record I believed had not been properly corrected.
And years of enforcement pressure while the authority issue remained unresolved.
That is the limbo.
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