RICHLAND CO.—Disclosure undergoes a number of attacks on a daily basis from people who don’t like what they read here and at our print version.
And many people threaten litigation, albeit hollowly.
However, there’s one attorney in Richland County who’s seen his way around that by involving family of Disclosure into litigation.
Many of you will recall that in our fight to keep our granddaughter in early 2011, Olney attorney Chuck Roberts had Jack’s relatives—our neighbors—looking for anything they could say or do that would cause trouble for us in the case. On March 11, Jack’s brother saw an opportunity: He trumped up one of Jack’s target practice sessions held in our own backyard (which we’ve filmed and shown here at the site), lying to authorities and telling them Jack was “being dangerous” with his practice sessions (even though there was a building between the two), thus creating the basis for what became an order of protection from Jack’s stepfather. The OP was bogus on the face of it, as nothing under Illinois’ Domestic Violence Act could be assessed as having been violated, and the initial petition in late March 2011 was turned down by the judge. However, for whatever reason, the neighbors were allowed to come up with different “occurrences” that they said violated the IDVA, and ultimately, they wore down the judge, Kim Harrell, who issued an OP on the basis of “harassment”…even though the only thing she said was “harassment” were columns, over the previous two years, that we had produced about Dan Howser’s indiscretions and the harassment he’s issued toward US when we learned he’d been unfaithful to Jack’s mom.
Columns (opinion pieces) are protected speech. No one was saying anything produced was false, only that they “didn’t like it.” And that’s not enough to stop a newspaper from publishing news. Which is what we did, in a series of articles about the OP that were factual, as they were based on what took place in court proceedings and filings. But Roberts believes he can prevail, and has filed a Rule to Show Cause that we’ve violated the OP by producing factual articles based on court proceedings in our paper….despite Judge Thomas Sutton’s ruling last September that Kim Harrell was NOT indicating articles constituted “harassment.”
So here now is the next Read the Lead offering, explaining the intricacies of what Roberts is doing to us: “Attorney defies judge’s order in OP”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RICHLAND CO.—A former state’s attorney has defied an order from the bench issued last year and has filed a motion attempting to stop Disclosure from publishing factual court accounts, calling them “harassment.”
Former Richland County state’s attorney, now pseudo defense attorney Chuck Roberts, filed a motion on July 22, 2013 asking Judge Robert Hopkins to hold Disclosure Publisher Jack Howser in contempt if he didn’t show cause as to why he published articles about his stepfather’s attempt to enforce what he says is a violation of an Order of Protection entered against him in April 2012.
The problem with the motion is that Roberts is saying articles published about Dan Howser are “harassment,” even though they are a stringently accurate depiction of Dan Howser’s attempts to harass Disclosure staff, and all at the behest of Roberts, who was using the 2011 OP in an effort to gain unfair advantage over the Howsers in a family case…in which he also happens to be the attorney for the opposing side.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You can read the rest of the story by clicking this link to get started with your online subscription, or pick up a print version at these vendors!