As if managing the federal cases and the mandamus weren’t enough, I had to shift my attention back to the district court because Attorney David Yopp refused to take any of my warnings seriously. Every move he made at this point was a calculated ploy to force the federal case into dismissal by manufacturing chaos in the state case, and instead of helping him, it only deepened the pattern I had been documenting. When I received the notice scheduling a hearing that should never have been placed on the calendar, it confirmed exactly that. I immediately objected and explained that the date conflicted with my schedule and that no hearing was appropriate while my Motion to Strike had been pending for nearly a month with no opposition on file. Despite all of that, they made no attempt to adjust anything, even though Yopp himself had asked for no hearing and then abruptly changed his mind.
My response was to file an emergency motion. In that motion I laid out the simple procedural facts the court continued to sidestep. My Motion to Strike had been served twenty-eight days earlier, and under the rules, Yopp’s time to respond had long expired with no filing. His Motion for Entry of Default had no legal or factual basis to begin with, was filed during an automatic stay under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-294, and directly conflicted with his own pending Motion to Dismiss that the court had already denied months earlier. I stated clearly that forcing me to miss work and appear at a hearing on an undisputed, sanction-able motion was harassment and retaliation, and a waste of judicial resources. I also noted that the September 25 hearing had only been scheduled because every judge who touched the case was either recused or conflicted due to the federal proceedings, meaning the calendar was being manipulated simply to push his improper motion ahead of mine.