Here's another blooper by Simpson:
Having been told several times that they may not file these documents, Appellants try to re-interpret this Court’s order of December 4, 2009 denying them leave to supplement the appellate record as instead inviting them to file these documents. (Brief p. 2). The tortured analysis is based on language in the Court’s December 4 order indicating that this Court mistakenly believed that the documents had been “submitted” to the district court after the original Notice of Appeal, and were therefore not part of the record for the first appeal but would be part of the record for the second appeal. In fact, the documents were offered but not filed with the district court because local rules require that leave be sought and granted prior to filing anything under seal. (U.S. District Court, Dist. of Mass., Local Rule 7.2(d)). Thus, in the district court the Appellants did not file the actual documents themselves, and the dicta indicating that the records would be part of the record for the second appeal was in error.
Instead of correcting this Court’s misunderstanding that these documents had already been filed in the district court, Appellants now exploit it. They pretend that the Court’s order denying them permission to file these documents in the first appeal is an invitation to file them now because “this Court has already determined that the documents in question …‘are part of the record on appeal.’” (Brief p. 3). This absurd analysis fails to account for the fact that this Court denied leave to enlarge the record to include these records.
Based on the above, Simpson has asserted that the Court of Appeals thought the Remnant and Westphal documents were part of the record on appeal for the second appeal, though he contends that the Court erred in so thinking. He said the Court mistakenly thought the documents were filed below when they were not, but there simply is no way that the Court could have made that kind of mistake, in my opinion. The Court knew we had filed a motion to file those documents under seal below, and the Court knew that that motion, actually two motions, had been denied.
What the December 4, 2009, order clearly said was that since we offered the documents below and appealed the denial of that offer, the documents were part of the record on appeal for the second appeal.
Now for Simpson again:
Recall that in the topsy-turvy world of the Appellants, this Court’s December 4 order denying them leave to file documents under seal in the first appeal means that they should file the documents in the second appeal. Whether Appellants lacked diligence is beside the point: they filed documents that they were ordered not to file.
See the contradiction? If the December 4, 2009, order of the Court of Appeals mistakenly said the documents were part of the record on appeal in the second appeal, then that same order did not order us not to file the documents in the second appeal. But if that order did order us not to file the documents in the second appeal, it could not have simultaneously mistakenly told us that the documents were already part of the record for the second appeal.