No. 18-1152

Elaine Steele, et al. v. Sylvester McCauley, et al.

Lower Court: Michigan
Docketed: 2019-03-06
Status: Denied
Type: Paid
Tags: breach-of-contract civil-procedure civil-rights constitutional-rights due-process estate-law fifth-amendment fourteenth-amendment judicial-bias probate probate-court property-rights
Key Terms:
AdministrativeLaw Arbitration DueProcess JusticiabilityDoctri
Latest Conference: 2019-05-09
Question Presented (AI Summary)

Arbitrary and biased probate court proceedings violating due process

Question Presented (OCR Extract)

QUESTION PRESENTED FOR REVIEW The present petition involves the iconic winter coat worn by Rosa Parks at the time of her arrest on a Montgomery, Alabama bus on December 1, 1955. Mrs. Parks died in 2005. The Respondents, who are Mrs. Parks’ nieces and nephews, failed to deliver the coat to Petitioners in breach of an agreement executed by the parties in 2007. Petitioners, who are Mrs. Parks’ closest friend and the charity they established together in 1987, filed a breach of contract action against Respondents in 2013. Despite lacking jurisdiction over a controversy involving property Mrs. Parks had given to her family thirty years before she died, the probate court judge presiding over her estate arrogated authority over the action (that had originally been filed in the court of general jurisdiction). He then proceeded to issue, in continuation of a pattern established years earlier, a series of bizarre and grossly biased rulings against the Petitioners, including the novel and impossible ruling that his denial of Petitioners’ 2009 procedural motion to compel arbitration of the controversy constituted a final decision on the substantive merits that barred litigation of the action and required its dismissal. The question presented for review is as follows: WHETHER THE ARBITRARY, BIASED AND CORRUPT PROCEEDINGS CONDUCTED BY THE WAYNE COUNTRY PROBATE COURT IN A SIMPLE AND UNCONTESTED BREACH OF CONTRACT ACTION VIOLATED THE DUE PROCESS GUARANTEED BY THE FIFTH AND il QUESTION PRESENTED Continued FOURTEENTH AMENDMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

Docket Entries

2019-05-13
Petition DENIED.
2019-04-23
DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 5/9/2019.
2019-03-04
Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due April 5, 2019)

Attorneys

Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, et al.
Steven G. CohenCohen & Associates PC, Petitioner
Steven G. CohenCohen & Associates PC, Petitioner