Comment CAN SPAM (Score 1) 397
I think it is highly likely that the court ignored the rest of your brief because the Washington state law you are relying on is preempted by the federal CAN SPAM Act of 2003. That means that the Washington state law has no force and effect.
Unless you can show facts that would give you a cause of action under the CAN SPAM Act, the judge was right to throw out your claim. And if you were solely relying on the Washington state law in your claim and that was clear at the beginning of the brief, it is not shocking (although perhaps still disappointing) that the judge did not read the entire brief.
Finally, I think you are assuming that the judge was reading exactly the file copy you looked at in your use of the "booby trap." That may or may not be true, depending on how that particular court is administered. What may have happened is that a clerk took out the pages in your brief and put them in an automatic document feeder for copying. Then, the court would have received the copies, and would not have seen the pages you stuck together, because they would not copy properly. Plus, that "booby trap" is probably an impermissible way to file the brief, and the court could probably reject your brief under court rules just for doing that, although that would rarely happen in Small Claims court.
Unless you can show facts that would give you a cause of action under the CAN SPAM Act, the judge was right to throw out your claim. And if you were solely relying on the Washington state law in your claim and that was clear at the beginning of the brief, it is not shocking (although perhaps still disappointing) that the judge did not read the entire brief.
Finally, I think you are assuming that the judge was reading exactly the file copy you looked at in your use of the "booby trap." That may or may not be true, depending on how that particular court is administered. What may have happened is that a clerk took out the pages in your brief and put them in an automatic document feeder for copying. Then, the court would have received the copies, and would not have seen the pages you stuck together, because they would not copy properly. Plus, that "booby trap" is probably an impermissible way to file the brief, and the court could probably reject your brief under court rules just for doing that, although that would rarely happen in Small Claims court.
