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Originally Posted by mertensv16
You've probably seen the points, but for whatever reason you chose to ignore them.
Look, good advice from the lawyers who post on Sui Juris consists of two things: first, getting people to abandon the crackpot theories that have no legal basis whatsoever, have a 99.99999% probability of losing in court (I'll concede a .00001% chance of winning just in case you draw a judge who is as crazy as the Minnesota JP), and will only end up harming anyone who relies on them. The second consists of explaining what one should do instead, which usually involves telling someone to see an attorney or trying to explain what the law really is and citing applicable statutes and caselaw in support.
One need only look at Wesley Snipes to discover the folly of relying on bogus tax denier arguments. Thankfully, I haven't seen anyone on Sui Juris peddling the Section 861 argument (upon which Snipes initially relied), so maybe even the SJ people have seen through it and realize how worthless it is. But rest assured, there are other theories being espoused here that are just as legally nonsensical, and the courts are becoming more and more likely to sanction someone with a fine for raising such frivolous arguments.
I don't know how many times I've seen Lawdog explain that when you're served with a lawsuit, you should see an attorney to help you or you should at least file a proper answer so that a default judgment isn't rendered against you. His advice seems to be routinely ignored by most of his audience, who (if they don't automatically reject anything offered by a lawyer) persist in their delusion that filing a "Refused for Cause" or some similar document will somehow serve as a magic spell to stop the creditor in his tracks, when in reality it will do nothing of the kind but only facilitate the creditor's getting a judgment.
I think Lawdog made this analogy before, but if Sui Juris were a website purporting to give medical advice and someone were to post a question asking how to deal with severe symptoms, he would most likely receive advice from the non-doctors along the lines of "plant a photograph of your worst enemy under an oak tree by the light of a full moon, piss on it, and the next day you'll be cured." Any medically trained person posting the advice to go see a doctor would be greeted with accusations of being a shill for the corrupt medical profession.
In the tax area, where I post most often, I don't think I've ever seen a post from someone with a real-life tax problem. That's not to say there haven't been such posts in the past, but I haven't visited here that long. What I see instead are arguments that have been rejected time after time after time by the courts and that are legally unsound and baseless, much like the hypothetical medical advice referred to above.
I get the distinct impression that the non-lawyer posters consist chiefly of (a) people who've been burned in the past in a legal proceeding (a bad divorce, a collection action) and who as a result don't trust lawyers, even though the reason they lost might've been the plain fact that they had a terrible case to begin with, (b) those disgruntled with government in general who think all the courts are corrupt and use that as a rationalization to dismiss all of the caselaw that demonstrates their position is legally baseless, (c) anarchists, for whom no amount of arguing what the law IS will have any effect, (e) the unfortunate ones with real legal problems who in desperation for a quick and free fix come to Sui Juris for advice, only to be told by the legally untrained about solutions that won't work in the real world, and (f) a few with real mental problems who are deluded to the point of living in a fantasyland that bears no resemblance to reality. Those in (c) and (f) are beyond hope, but there's still a chance for the others.
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