Judge of bogus 'postal court' files judgments, claims only nouns have legal meaning
A federal judge in Connecticut has found that a so-called federal postal court appears to be “a sham and no more than a product of fertile imagination,” and he will not accept its judgment against a mortgage servicing company.
On March 7, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Meyer struck (PDF) the registration of a purported $11.5 million judgment issued by the postal court against Ocwen Financial Corp., the Connecticut Law Tribune (sub. req.) reports. Meyer said the stricken legal filing was among dozens of the postal court’s purported judgments filed for registration in Connecticut in recent weeks.
The postal court is led by David Wynn Miller, who invented his own legal language that appears to incorporate mathematical formulas and unusual syntax, according to the Connecticut Law Tribune. Miller claims that only nouns have legal meanings and writes many words in all capital letters.
He also writes his name as “Judge: David-Wynn: Miller,” for reasons he explained in November 2002 at a homeland security expo, according to a 2003 post by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “My name is David hyphen Wynn full colon Miller,” he told the audience, before launching into an explanation that included why his punctuated name is a noun and how punctuation “makes me a life, l-i-f-e.”
The Connecticut legal filing had an attachment of the postal court’s judgment that alerted the court: “This document is to serve as a translation summary of the Final Default Judgment by the Federal Postal Court. The original language of the Final Default Judgment was written in Correct Sentence Structure Communication Parse Syntax Grammar. The language has been translated to English pursuant to the Uniform Foreign-Money Claims Act.”
Meyer wrote that he had doubts about the validity of the postal court and scheduled a show-cause hearing. Participating in the hearing by telephone were individuals identified as Miller, who said he was a judge of the postal court, and Leighton Ward, who said he was the court clerk.
Miller said Benjamin Franklin opened the postal court in 1775, but it closed a year later with the onset of the Revolutionary War. On Dec. 21, 2012—the predicted end of the world according to the Mayan calendar—Miller reopened the court.
“Miller explained to me that the Federal Postal Court operates on the basis of a sophisticated mathematical understanding of language that proves that certain mortgage documents are fraudulent,” Meyer wrote. Miller said the court has no fixed location, but it has transitory jurisdiction wherever the federal postal eagle symbol may be.
Meyer investigated further with a Westlaw search for David Wynn Miller. Meyer said the search revealed “a lengthy history of frivolous filings that use the same impenetrable language that appears in the filings in this case.”
Meyer said Miller’s legal filings don’t meet federal statutory requirements. “There is no basis to conclude that the purported judgment of the ‘Federal Postal Court’ arises from any valid legal authority at all,” Meyer wrote. “So far as I can tell, the ‘Federal Postal Court’ is a sham and no more than a product of a fertile imagination.”
The United States Postal Service does have a court that hears civil mail-fraud and other cases, as reported by the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) in 2001. But it is a tribunal of administrative law judges and is called the Judicial Officer Department of the U.S. Postal Service. Miller is not listed as a member.
Updated at 11:52 p.m. to add info about the Judicial Officer Department. Updated on March 25 to describe the Judicial Officer Department of the U.S. Postal Service.
