2006 & 2013
A "$30 car tabs" initiative opinion. It provides Sound Transit with unjustified case law allowing its defective voting right and aberrant taxation policies to continue. It is the apotheosis of collusive-claim litigation in Washington State.
This case had been remanded by the Justices for resolution of a narrow issue - whether terms in an initiative impaired certain contracts in violation of the "contracts clause." In the appeal of the trial court's determination of that issue, a Tim Eyman entity raised a slew of certain-to-lose new claims. The opinion addresses them, despite the fact that no adequate briefing or resolution of them had occurred at the trial court level, no sufficient factual record relating to them existed, and these issues were well beyond the scope of remand. The governments got everything they wanted out of this opinion.
This opinion begins disregarding precedents at Paragraph 48:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16184161878121636503&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr#p1018
The appellate brief shows the intervenors did not even raise that argument:
http://www.soundpolitics.com/I-776_Opening_Appeal_Brief.pdf .
Barbara Madsen put this in the opinion: “[A]lthough the members on the board are appointed, all but one of the board members are elected officials, providing the taxpayers a vote.” That's a lie by omission. The voting right residents were provided falls far short of what the Federal Constitution demands.
Residents of the RTA district have a right to a full, effective and equal vote to control the membership of that local government's policy making body. Madsen knows full well the voting right provided RTA residents fails to meet those constitutional standards. She pretended the legal infirmities didn't exist though, to curry favor with the RTA's financial beneficiaries. This powerful interest group wanted the RTA's activities placed above laws, and it wanted the public ignorant of its rights. Madsen was more than happy to act dishonestly to further that interest group's goals.
https://www.scribd.com/document/376834294/Sound-Transit-Claims-Outline
The opinion holds sufficient procedural safeguards exist to prevent administrative abuses. Legislative powers, not merely administrative functions, were delegated by the state to the board. Moreover, the four illusory "procedural safeguards" the opinion references in fact could not prevent administrative, let alone legislative, abuses of power.
The kind of legal claim that should have been brought, but was not, would have cited the relevant 14th Amendment authorities limiting states' authority when providing voting rights over local government legislators. As none of the lawyers involved wanted that issue addressed, it is ignored in the briefing. The majority then follows suit -- the Justices feign ignorance of the key facts and legal authorities that comprise the legal claims that people could use to vindicate their rights. It's garden variety judicial corruption -- cover up what your patrons want covered up.
The state highway (I-90) property handover litigation.
The plaintiff was Kemper Freeman, the individual in this state with the most to gain financially from the Justices allowing the state to transfer the infrastructure Sound Transit needed (despite how fuel tax revenues had been used to acquire, plan, construct and maintain that stretch of highway). Phil Talmadge was Freeman’s lawyer. Talmadge was a Justice, so he knows how the game is played. He filed two collusive claim lawsuits. Here’s the Supreme Court opinion that came out of the second one:
http://courts.mrsc.org/supreme/178wn2d/178wn2d0387.htm
It repeatedly states WSDOT would transfer “lanes” (for example: “Sound Transit also agreed to advance the cost of replacing the center two lanes, credited toward its lease.”) What WSDOT actually intended to transfer was “property and improvements between Seattle and Bellevue, Washington” (e.g., parts of concrete pontoons and roadbeds – infrastructure built and maintained using fuel tax revenues). That truth was part of the record. See, CP 1380 here
http://www.courts.wa.gov/content/Briefs/A08/872678%20respondents%20brief.pdf
The Justices used the intentionally-defective claims’ language, and they feigned ignorance about both what the documents say and the controlling laws to misrepresent the transaction. They did that because the constitutional limit that protects the interests of the driving public doesn't apply to “lanes” (there was no fuel tax revenue spent on those). This opinion allowed the governments to ignore the significant interests of the driving public the 18th Amendment to the state constitution is supposed to protect: the ongoing use of this critical highway infrastructure planned, built and maintained using fuel tax revenues.
