The Void Generation is a highly readable account of a series of publishing mistakes by the Judicial Council of California between 1999 and 2007 that resulted in the publication of thirteen (13) constitutionally and statutorily void restraining order forms, which the Judicial Council refused to correct until long after the forms were published. With no valid forms available for them to use, the courts were compelled to issue all of their restraining orders on void and unenforceable forms. The public record suggests these void forms may have caused the false arrest and imprisonment of thousands of presumably innocent respondents-without a warning notice or a prior hearing.
For those tempted to dismiss this book as mere speculation, the facts are irrefutably documented with key pages photocopied from the Judicial Council's published forms, official reports, and binding decisions. Comparisons of the void forms with their later valid revisions prove that all of California's mandatory restraining order forms were void in the year 2000, and that many of the Judicial Council's restraining order forms were void for periods ranging from two (2) to more than eight (8) years after these important forms were first published.
An included April 17, 2000 Advisory Committee report reveals the Judicial Council's belated discovery that its restraining order forms violated the then newly enacted Senate Bill 218 (1999) by failing to warn respondents they were prohibited from “owning or possessing a firearm.” The second page of this report also reveals the Judicial Council's deliberate refusal to provide an alternative one-page form containing the required firearms prohibition notice because “attaching the warning to every restraining order might be burdensome to court clerks and individuals.”
The minutes of two general meetings record the Judicial Council's unanimous and binding decisions to revise these restraining order forms, long after the forms were voided by the enactment of S.B. 218. And two research reports reveal well over 12,000 young men between the ages of 24 and 35 may have been falsely arrested and imprisoned for allegedly violating the firearms prohibition notices that were in fact missing from all of these restraining orders.
The Void Generation is an indispensable guide to what may well be one of the biggest and up until now best concealed judicial scandals in California history. Since no court can claim jurisdiction over a void order, and no statute of limitations applies to attacking and setting a void order aside, this book may also be the key to exoneration and compensation for their civil damages for a whole generation of falsely arrested and imprisoned respondents.
A must read for everyone concerned with protecting civil rights and assuring the impartial administration of justice in California.
