The Court Gave Me Two Filing Instructions. I Needed a Third.

On July 23, the court gave me a small administrative escape room.

The minutes said I “shall not file any further pleadings in this matter.”

The continued-hearing order said to file and serve additional supporting evidence, a witness list, an exhibit list, and premarked exhibits at least seven days before the August 27 hearing.

The deadline was August 20.

So there I was, standing between two doors with a stack of papers. One said DO NOT FILE. The other said FILE BY THURSDAY. Across the aisle, opposing counsel's submissions had the confidence of unreviewed Claude Code findings prepared for the United States of California, a sovereign nation apparently located between autocomplete and Narnia. Evidently a bar card comes with diplomatic immunity from geography. I, meanwhile, was expected to find the invisible third door: an afterthought for the disabled & exploited.

This is the sort of puzzle that would get a software company publicly roasted for its user experience. In court it becomes a learning opportunity, available exclusively to people whose lives are already on fire; a courtesy bestowed by the ever honorable Janice Chow.

And I hadn't even gotten to the evidence yet.

Please Take Your Questions to the Hearing

Rewind to May 1. I had proposed a filing asking for the native records behind disputed screenshots, messages, and call-log exhibits. Not a request to photoshop the pixels into better-looking pixels. I wanted to examine what they came from.

I asked my then-attorneys about getting that work before the court.

Keenan Webb explained that the substitution paperwork hadn't been filed yet, so the firm wasn't on the record to file on my behalf. Elliot Silver called the proposed request for order erroneous, said filing it would make me “look weak,” and directed the source-evidence questions toward the hearing.

Funny how “weakness,” the suspicion of negligence, and the fear of a predetermined ruling keep showing up arm in arm. I wanted the source records examined; the immediate concern was how asking would look. Apparently the exhibits could arrive in their underwear, but my RFO needed a tuxedo.

Different explanations. Same destination: the hearing.

Apparently the hearing was the magical service window where all the questions I had been trying to raise could finally receive their little numbered ticket.

Fine. I could work with that. I would gather the source-record questions and bring them to the hearing.

Then July arrived with a filing deadline, a filing restriction, and the small logistical detail that I was now representing myself.

The process had successfully referred me to itself.

The Accommodation Form in Witness Protection

On July 17, I prepared and signed an MC-410 accommodation request. I asked for breaks, processing pauses, permission to rely on written notes, and clear instructions.

Then I did something profoundly useful: I kept it.

I did not file it.

No court employee rejected it. No judge denied it. I had created an accommodation request and given it the circulation of a secret diary. The form was safe in my possession, which is not traditionally where an institution goes looking for requests it has received.

This is not a paragraph in which I get to blame everybody else. The administrative circus occasionally lets me operate one of the cannons.

I'm autistic. Under pressure, deciphering a set of ambiguous instructions can become an entire task before the actual task even starts. That is why I prepared the form. And yes, the form I needed to file about navigating the process became one more thing I had to navigate the process to file.

A little joke the paperwork played on its own paperwork.

Six days later, I was looking at two filing instructions and a pile of documents. The MC-410 remained in my files, not the court's.

The forms were, at least, having an excellent week.

Your Documents Will Be Ready After Your Hearing

By August, I had something more useful than a theory about screenshot evidence: an actual signed declaration from an independent digital-evidence professional, dated August 11, describing ways the disputed material could be examined.

The source records and former-counsel file I needed to prepare with were another matter.

Pieces arrived in stages. Court documents. Billing material. Printed email threads referencing attachments I could not match to the production in hand. I asked for an accounting through the State Bar's Attorney-Client Bridge Program.

On August 21, Bridge told me the lawyer would resend the complete file by August 28. The program declined to expedite and explained that counsel needed reasonable time to prepare and deliver the materials.

August 28.

Let's put that date in the place the calendar had thoughtfully reserved for it:

August 20: Evidence deadline.

August 27: Hearing.

August 28: The date offered for getting the file needed for the first two dates.

For a moment I wondered whether the paperwork was traveling by time machine. Then I remembered that time machines usually go backward, and this operation seemed committed to moving in one direction.

I appreciate reasonable preparation time. I also appreciate oxygen, but I would be confused if a lifeguard scheduled mine for tomorrow.

Counsel did send further materials and category-by-category responses on August 24. Some responses said requested items did not exist. I received what was sent. I continued to dispute whether it accounted for the materials I had identified.

So no, the story is not that nothing arrived.

The story is that some of it arrived after the August 20 evidence deadline. An inbox is many things. A time machine is not one of them.

May I Borrow Three Days From the Future?

I submitted a DV-115 request asking to move the hearing. My explanation was not especially mystical: material had arrived late; I needed a way to use it.

I proposed alternatives, too. More preparation time. A limited supplemental submission. An oral offer of proof. Not exactly demands for a private courtroom and a harpist.

The case register records the continuance request as denied. I have not located a signed explanation of the denial in the material I reviewed.

I could fill several pages with what I imagine that decision meant. Fortunately, the internet already has enough people explaining what judges secretly think.

There was another request on the calendar. At 7:10 p.m. on August 25, opposing counsel sought permission for a witness to testify remotely. The court approved remote testimony on August 26 for the August 27 hearing.

One problem could be solved by moving a person onto a screen. My problem required moving a date.

The screen moved. The date didn't.

The hearing was still August 27. Time, once again, had obeyed every official instruction except the one I needed.

The Hearing Arrived on Time. Everything Else Is Disputed.

August 27 came, as dates do when they have never been instructed to wait for evidence.

The court granted a restraining order against me, with an expiration date of August 27, 2031.

Five years.

This is the part where I stop treating the calendar as a cute prop. The order is real. My objections to the preparation process do not erase it. That is precisely why I care how the record was assembled and heard.

The amended certified transcript records foundation objections, including one when opposing counsel began questioning about another alleged incident. I objected. The objection was overruled. The examination continued.

So much for the magical service window. I had been pointed toward the hearing to raise source-record issues, spent months trying to arrive with material to test them, and reached the hearing with the preparation dispute still attached.

The court made credibility findings in the petitioner's favor. I was permitted a final comment after the ruling; when I later tried to bring up another evidence issue, the exchange ended. The transcript has known recording gaps, and I have not independently compared the relevant passages with the audio.

The final ruling was not a five-year punishment for a missing instruction manual. But the instruction manual would have been awfully useful before the ruling acquired a five-year expiration date.

My complaint is about how one gets from the source evidence to the decision, without treating a document's existence as proof that somebody had a fair opportunity to use it.

Your Question, Has Been Referred to Your Question

The paperwork developed a sequel after the hearing.

I filed a disability-access grievance on September 21. On September 29, the ADA Coordinator reported no accommodation request on record. Correct: the July MC-410 I had prepared was still not a filed request.

After reconsideration correspondence, the Court Executive Officer's October 28 response explained, among other things, that staff could not interpret judicial orders or give legal advice. My protective review request went out that evening and was acknowledged the next day. Acknowledged, not decided.

By this point I had begun to admire the elegance of the system.

There was an instruction for the deadline. An instruction for what not to file. An office that could process requests. An office that could not interpret the instructions. A form for asking for clearer instructions that I had managed not to file. And a hearing that arrived with punctuality none of the supporting material could hope to match.

I was not asking for a court to write my argument. I was asking for a usable route to present the records behind it.

Instead I got the legal equivalent of assembling a wardrobe with half the instructions in the box, the other half scheduled to arrive after the housewarming party, and a polite note that customer service does not provide furniture advice.

The third instruction I needed was simple enough to fit on a sticky note:

Here's how to get the source-record question in front of the court while there is still time to do something with the answer.

I never found that sticky note.

I did find the date August 27, 2031. That one was printed clearly.