A fed-up bankruptcy judge Wednesday ordered a Hastings attorney and her client to show cause why each shouldn't be fined up to $10,000 for calling the jurist a "Catholic Knight Witch Hunter" — as well as other names — in a court filing.
In a pair of sternly worded orders, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Nancy Dreher said a legal memorandum filed last month by attorney Rebekah Nett was filled with "unsupported and outrageous allegations of bigotry, deceit, conspiracy and scandalous statements."
Among other things, the attorney's memo called Dreher, another judge and a couple of trustees "dirty Catholics" and said the courts were "composed of a bunch of ignoramus, bigoted Catholic beasts that carry the sword of the church."
Nett had signed the document, but it was written by Naomi Isaacson, a Minneapolis woman who is president of Yehud-Monosson USA Inc., which owned gas stations and convenience stores. It is a subsidiary of a religious group known as the Dr. R.C. Samanta Roy Institute of Science and Technology Inc., or SIST, in Shawano, Wisconsin, and is embroiled in a bankruptcy dispute in Dreher's court.
Dreher set a hearing for January 4 and told Nett and Isaacson they'd have to come up with good reasons why they shouldn't be fined.
She also said she plans to order them to write public apologies to those slurred in the November filing and will order Nett "to attend, at her own expense, no less than 30 hours of ethics training within the next 12 months."
Eric Cooperstein, a Minneapolis lawyer who has a practice devoted to legal ethics, said the threat of $10,000 in sanctions was rare.
"As sanctions go, that's a lot of money," he said. "It's not uncommon to see four-figure sanctions for attorneys for various types of inappropriate conduct in court; $10,000 I would call a significant sanction, particularly when it's not related to costs incurred by an opposing party."
The Pioneer Press sent an email to Isaacson requesting an interview. In her reply, she fired off 12 questions of own, including one asking if the newspaper is "owned by the Catholic Church or just a majority stockholder."
"In the time past we have had a bitter experience with your paper and they called us a cult," she wrote. "The real cult is yourself and the Catholic Church you worship. It is described as dirty, filthy, and the most dangerous death cult in human history."
The Pioneer Press reported December 1 that former members of the group call it a cult.
In a letter to the judge dated Monday, Isaacson wrote that, "All the things that this Debtor has gone through are worse than the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and blood libels."
A lawyer representing Isaacson in the past said she is an Orthodox Jew. Isaacson, 37, is also a lawyer and once worked as a clerk for Hennepin County District Judge Janet Posten, but her entry on the Minnesota Judicial Branch website says she does not represent private clients.
Nett, 36, of St. Paul, who operates Westview Law Center in Hastings, did not return a call for comment Wednesday.
If Dreher sanctions Nett, it will mark the second time in the span of a year the lawyer's inflammatory rhetoric has gotten her in trouble with a federal judge. In March, U.S. District Judge William Greisbach of the Eastern District of Wisconsin ordered her to pay $5,000 for "gratuitous and offensive comments" in a filing in a civil suit.
In that case, Nett represented Midwest Amusement Park LLC, a go-kart track owned by the Wisconsin religious group. A finance company sued Midwest Amusement for breach of contract after it failed to make payments on 12 go-karts it bought.
The case went to trial, and Nett's client lost. In a post-trial filing, Nett accused the judge of religious discrimination and claimed his treatment of her client was akin to the Nazis' treatment of Jews.
In sanctioning Nett, Griesbach said her accusations were "an affront to the dignity of the legal profession and intended to undermine the respect and confidence essential to the proper functioning of this Court."
In her show-cause orders for Nett and Isaacson, Dreher also expressed concern about the language in the womens' filing.
In particular, she quoted 10 passages from the memorandum that contained religious slurs, allegations of conspiracy or other diatribes against Dreher, fellow U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis O'Brien, bankruptcy trustee Nauni Manty and U.S. Trustee Colin Kreuziger.
Nett and Isaacson called Dreher a "black-robed bigot." They complained that Manty was "a Jesuitess" with a "track record of lies, deceit, treachery and connivery."
"Since Debtor has been vocal in exposing their dirty deeds, these dirty Catholics have conspired together to hurt Debtor," Nett and Isaacson wrote.
Dreher told Nett and Isaacson they could face sanctions of up to $1,000 on each of the 10 excerpts, for a total of $10,000 each.
The judge didn't directly address the religious slurs in the body of her orders, but in one footnote she wrote, "I have never been Catholic."
In another footnote she wrote, "I do not know what religion, if any, Ms. Manty is, but it cannot be the same as mine, as I am of not of any particular faith."
The judge noted in her order that the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure prohibit a lawyer from signing or filing a document meant to harass or presenting as fact statements that aren't supported by evidence.
Nett's and Isaacson's filing stunned those who read and write legal documents.
"I can't think of any reason a lawyer would do this. The language is shocking and inappropriate," said Peter Knapp, a law professor who is co-director of the William Mitchell College of Law's clinic program. "It does raise professional responsibility concerns, and it raises other concerns as well."
Isaacson, SIST and one of the Wisconsin group's subsidiaries, Midwest Oil of Minnesota, sued the Pioneer Press for defamation and other claims in April 2005. They sued over an article the paper had published about one of the institute's gas stations in Anoka that was selling gasoline below the state-mandated minimum price.
Three months after the suit was filed, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted the paper's request to throw out the case. In his order, the judge noted the plaintiff's complaint was "void of any facts whatsoever that pertain to the harm allegedly suffered by Plaintiffs as a result of the purported defamation." The dismissal was upheld on appeal.
In February 2006, the Minnesota Department of Commerce fined Midwest Oil $140,000 for 293 violations of the state's Unlawful Gasoline Sales Act. The agency said the company sold gas below cost at stations it owned in Anoka, Oakdale and Albert Lea.
In levying the civil penalty, a deputy commerce commissioner noted that company officials had twice failed to respond to the department's request for information.
