Michael Morris – In Focus

You may have heard recently that Henry Smith had filed a lawsuit against Otero County and nearly all of his deputies on Monday of last week. Well the Monday thing was from the pens of Alamogordo Lord of Loon Karl Anderson and his nominal editor Michael Becker at the Alamogordo Daily News. Of course the suit (PDF) was not filed until Friday shortly after the filing was questioned on the Mike Haymes radio show. What did you expect? The ADN to have it right? You’re kidding? While the story of how this got filed is better than what was filed, it is not important.

The Lord of Loon was on a roll over the last couple of weeks since the Otero County Sheriff’s Office began to issue Smith, part owner of part of the Alamorosa truck stop, for violations of the smoking prohibition law. So caught up in this story and so eager to please his right-wing constituency was Anderson that he soon turned to lies about the filing of the case. Add to that Anderson’s lack of even a semblance of clue that would qualify him to read a pleading and you have what resembles a jailhouse written rant edited somewhat in order to title it a complaint. The only thing funnier than this self indicting ill-advised “complaint” is the way Lord Karl Anderson characterized it.

Here is what I will say about this suit as a county resident. If Otero County Attorney Dan Bryant spends one dime of taxpayer money hiring anyone to defend this action he should be fired, tarred and feathered. Any high school Business Law II student could knock this out of the federal box since he never even attempted any state remedies. The foolish complaint has only one viable allegation and that is a state law matter. After you read this you will see the 15 uses of his SSN on the tickets is about all that is even viable till first motions hearing. This is not the makings of a $435 million suit, but rather an apology if this is, in fact, illegal.

At paragraph 21 we see that my prediction that Smith began the problem turned out to be true. While I understand that there are some who feel they can keep the Sheriff out of their restaurant during business hours, that is a bit silly. Smith asserts that Deputy Hanson came in and asked for the owner. Smith then asserts that his greeting was a demand for a warrant. Smith then continues to escalate the situation by calling the state police to remove the sheriff. Read it yourself.

Now follow this closely. After admitting answering the deputy’s request for the owner as the apparent owner Smith, when shooting for the $435 million jackpot, states at paragraph 58, “ Plaintiffs have had to shut down the convenience store and therefore have lost the option to purchase the rest of the business including the liquor license which is number 0700.”. So, according to Smith he is not even the owner Hanson was asking for. Maybe Hanson now needs to go back and amend the charges regarding the identification. If Smith is telling the truth then the Wed. story may be as bunkful as Lord Karl’s fantasy portrayal of the filing and the case.

When you are looking for news the only news the ADN seems to be able to find is its own creations. For those of you who had to hear the vileness of Lord Karl as he stood unable to admit his lie about the filing I apologize. Had I not mentioned the case had not been filed on Monday as Anderson and Becker had stated Lord Karl would not have felt the need to stain last night’s festivities with his own brand of lunacy. So what if 9:32AM on Friday is another Anderson lie? So what if he was spewing that Michal Becker is withholding some truth that will make my statement that the case was not filed on Monday somehow seem foolish?

No ladies and gentlemen what matters is that we can now see the parody of a case written with all of the skill and literacy of the average jailhouse lawyer devoid of any cognizable claim ripe or not. What it contains are statements that may tend to indicate that Smith was not even the owner of the establishment when he began some sort of bunker dweller war with the Sheriff. Oh, no folks. There is much more to this than the two stooges at the Village Rag told you. The probable cause of all of this mis-reporting is a combination of Anderson’s huge ego and small mind compounded with Becker’s unwholesome lack of curiosity regarding the drivel that pours out of that magnificent farce of a newspaper he edits.