Retaliation – Common Law Liens

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: United States of America v. Brent A. Swallers

Case No.: 17-2568

Officials: RIPPLE, KANNE, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.

Focus: Retaliation – Common Law Liens 

Indiana Child Protective Services removed Brent Swallers’s daughter from his custody in September 2015. Swallers responded with a deluge of filings in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. When those filings were not resolved in his favor, Swallers retaliated against the judges who ruled against him. He filed “Common Law Liens” (each to the tune of $10,000,000) with the Marion County Recorder against all of the then‐sitting district judges in the Southern District of Indiana except Judge Richard Young.

Swallers then filed a notice of his liens in an action assigned to Southern District of Indiana Judge Tanya Walton Pratt. Judge Pratt subsequently ordered the Marion County Recorder to expunge any liens that Swallers had filed against Southern District of Indiana Judges Lawrence, Barker, Magnus‐Stinson, Pratt, and Young. The order also stated that the U.S. Attorney should arrange for the service of a separate expungement order on the recorder of any other Indiana County in which Swallers had filed a similar, invalid lien.

Swallers now appeals and seeks to vacate his conviction on the ground that Judge Young should have recused himself. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

Affirmed

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.