United Nations Mired in Dental Conspiracy With City of Sacramento

Or so says claimant John Paul Marshall. In the case of Marshall v. United Nations, 2006 WL 947697 (E.D. Cal. 2006) (not available online) a federal district court in Sacramento was faced with a 325 page “rambling and unintelligible” complaint that alleged that the United Nations, the United States, the State of California, and the city of Sacramento violated Marshall’s rights under national and international law. The court last week dismissed the claim as “so insubstantial as to be patently without merit.” Here is an excerpt:

The mostly incomprehensible amended complaint presents no plausible basis for federal question jurisdiction. The facts alleged apparently concern, inter alia, plaintiff’s attempts to recover expenses incurred for violation of his civil rights through defendants’ failures in processing of criminal charges and complaints, criminal official misconduct, and administrative inquiries and hearings in regard to plaintiff’s claims of torture which he brought to the United Nations. In the same paragraph, plaintiff discusses the United Nations’ attempts to prevent plaintiff from using his funds and “trying to fix needed dental work to maintain his employability.” Another example of unintelligible pleading is the claim that “[l]aw enforcement, government officials, employers, human/civil rights organizations, legal practitioners, and others failure to act, continual misrepresentation, and denial of the plaintiff’s truthful claims of 24 hour a day 7 day a week violent harassment, antics, criminal acts, and abuse of mind control are further violations which also continues to toll the statute of limitations!” Elsewhere, plaintiff alleges that he and his partner “suffered loss in ‘credit’ and income back in1991 after the telephone sabotage to business and just recently in 2004 as continued acts to retaliate for and to further hinder civil/human/legal rights efforts i.e. the September 2004 contact with the Legal Aid Society (LAS).” Plaintiff has not linked any defendants to any acts, and has also failed to state in a comprehensible manner how any of his rights were violated. In fact, the aforementioned paragraphs are probably the most intelligible of the 325 page complaint.

Pity the attorneys for the United States, California and Sacramento who all made appearances and expended the time and effort to file motions to dismiss. The United Nations failed to appear, but no worries, the court threw out the case against them sua sponte due to the “patent frivolity” of the complaint.



One of the guilty pleasures of having worked for three tribunals in my day is to see more than my share of patently frivolous, off-the-wall, outrageous, conspiracy theory complaints. These complaints rarely see the light of day, so when I came across the case of Marshall v. United Nations, I couldn’t resist passing it along to our readers.



Conspiracy theorists are the paranoid periphery in our society. Lacking all political or intellectual clout, they are drawn to the courts like a moth is drawn to the flame, thinking it is navigating by the moon. Their misguided fate is just as predictable.



If you care to read more about conspiracy theories, a nice summary is available here, including the delightful bon mot from Christopher Hitchens that “conspiracy theories are the ‘exhaust fumes of democracy’, the unavoidable result of a large amount of information circulating among a large number of people.”