Monday, November 21, 2011

Dating in the federal court - (post)

This is about post-dating documents.

Our blogger is in his mid 50's. He's not a child anymore who lives in an innocent world. So he shouldn't be surprised to find corruption everywhere. Even in the federal court. Sometimes at the lowest levels.

But because he's a Christian, our blogger doesn't think like the rest of the world and is still shocked at the evil out there.

He was at the clerk's office of the Arizona District Court in Phoenix recently, filing some papers for Michael's Law and chatting with the clerk. Before the clerk hand-stamped the papers with that day's date, she took a quick look at the stamp to make sure the correct date was set. This was after noon. (The implication being that others already had papers stamped that day. In fact, someone was there just before our blogger. One presumes the date would be correct already.)

Our blogger remarked that it must be quite a trick to read numbers backward off the rubber stamp.

The clerk laughed and said she had learned very quickly how to read the stamp backward, especially because she often had to set back in time.

What?

The full impact of this statement didn't quite hit our blogger and besides, what could he do about it? He made a joke about it and said, "Oh . . . we're not post dating documents, are we?"

To which the clerk laughed sheepishly and said, "Shhh . . . don't tell anyone." (Or words to that effect.)

We don't think she's taking money to do post-date documents. (But our blogger didn't ask what it takes.) That would leave only a judge's informal "order" to post date something.

But however it happens, apparently it happens.

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