One day, the state of Washington decided to sue him for breaking various laws. Facing defeat, Tim and his lawyer Larry Feinstein invented a brilliant defense: file for bankruptcy!
I guess they reasoned that if the state won the lawsuit, it would bankrupt him, so why not file bankruptcy now and ask the bankruptcy court to stop the lawsuit.
Let us all admire this Wiley E. Coyote level of genius.
The State filed for an exemption from the bankruptcy stay under 11 U.S. Code § 362(b)(4), which allows governmental units to continue lawsuits to enforce "regulatory power". Then Feinstein argued to the press that this wouldn't work, because that exemption applied to "a governmental unit or any organization exercising authority under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction".
[Quoting Feinstein: “Perhaps I am missing something, but I thought the actions against Mr. Eyman have to do with campaign finance laws of the state and not about Mr. Eyman producing, stockpiling and using chemical weapons … Perhaps his politics and political action committees are toxic to the state, but still, I think that is a bit of a stretch.”]
The answer is yes, he was "missing something": the word "or". To be fair, it's very small.
You can use the exemption if you are a "governmental unit OR an organization exercising authority under the Convention etc etc"
I like to think that Feinstein was just making a joke, because that at least would make sense.
I hope also that his client was in on the joke, because then we wouldn't have malpractice. Either way, the court humorlessly allowed the exemption, apparently reasoning the word "exercising" did not apply to "a governmental unit". It could have done this on the plain structure of grammar or it could have construed the text taking judicial notice of the complete lack of American 'governmental units' whose authority derives from the Convention.
The main case resumed. Eyman discovered his bankruptcy is not only costing him big bucks, but also forcing him to voluntarily disclose a whole lot of information that he'd rather not get about. The State of Washington might have been happy for Eyman to continue his bankruptcy since its disclosures would have saved them a lot of discovery. But ... you can't always get what you want.
Eyman filed to end the bankruptcy claim, and let us hope he and his lawyer have a nice chat about the bill.
There's a lesson to be learned from all this, but the people who need to learn it probably won't. -
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Cites:
- So much for that bankruptcy: Tim Eyman moves for his Chapter 11 case to be dismissed
- Eyman bankruptcy filing stalls state campaign-finance suit (In which either Eyman's lawyer or the reporter misquotes the law)
- 11 U.S. Code § 362 - Automatic stay
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