- [Baliff] The Honorable Justices
of the Supreme Court of the State of Alaska.
The Supreme Court is now in session.
- [Chief Justice Carney] Good morning,
Ms. Oyola.
I understand your name is no longer Gilreath,
and so this case is now
Oyola v. Souriyasong.
- [Ms. Oyola] Souriyasong, Your Honor.
- Souriyasong, thank you.
- You're welcome.
And he is not participating this morning,
so you will have 15 minutes to tell us what you want
us to know.
We have read everything that you have submitted in
writing, so don't feel like you need to just go
back through that.
We may ask you questions.
We're not trying to trip you up.
We just want to know things
that we aren't clear on, okay?
- Okay.
- You have 15 minutes.
You may begin.
- Okay, thank you.
May it please the court.
My name is Jamie Marie Oyola.
I'm nervous.
I'm sorry.
- That's fine.
- Formerly Gilreath, appearing pro se.
This appeal arises from a civil action in which the
trial court entered a default judgment while denying my
timely jury demands, conducted no hearings,
made no factual findings and relied
on unrelated civil records.
The result was a denial of due process and
an abuse of discretion requiring reversal.
Your honors, I would also like to let you know that I
have prepared a structural outline to ensure accuracy
and I will refer to that as I proceed.
Multiple due process violations compounded into a
structurally unfair proceeding resulting in a legally
defective default judgment and denial of a jury trial
involving no hearings, no jury,
no fact finding, reliance on unrelated records,
and damages just pulled out of thin air.
Issue number one,
denial of jury trial plus due process.
The first and most fundamental error in the denial of
my jury trial in violation of Alaska civil rule 38 B
and constitutional due process.
The jury demand was timely, never withdrawn.
There was no waiver, no hearing explaining denial.
- Ms. Oyola, can I ask you a question?
- Yes.
- So what a default judgment means to me
is that the other side didn't show up,
didn't bother to say that you were wrong.
And so at that point,
I'm not sure what a jury could do because usually the
jury decides who wins and you had already won.
What do you imagine the jury could have done?
- I wasn't certain that Mr. Souriyasong
wouldn't show up because he was present.
I felt like a jury could have listened to my side of
the story and taken my evidence as witness to what I
went through with Mr. Souriyasong
in my employment situation.
- Okay, thank you.
- You're welcome.
- [Justice Borghesan] Ms. Oyola, I also hav
e a question for you, if you don't mind.
So I'm looking at your complaint
that you filed originally.
- Yes.
- You used a form provided by the court system.
I'm looking actually at page two of your excerpt.
And you checked the box.
I guess my question is,
I want to make sure that I know what precisely were the
documents you attached to your complaint because you
checked a box on the court form complaint that says
more pages are attached.
- Yes, sir.
- And then I see, you know,
a long narrative in the record that looks like a
continuation of your allegations.
I just want you to tell me which documents
did you submit with your complaint?
- The original complaint, gosh,
I'm trying to think there was so much.
I believe I printed out an affidavit explaining my side
of the situation with Mr. Souriyasong.
Also OSHA complaint that I had formerly submitted
to the state of Alaska's OSHA.
I can't remember everything.
I'm sorry, I'm really anxious.
- Okay. I have a few just
clarification questions.
Like maybe this will help jog your memory.
And you know, when in our court,
like we, we look at the record,
the record or all the documents
that were submitted to the trial court.
I don't know if you have that in front of you or not.
- The huge stack.
- Yeah, the huge stack.
- I don't.
I don't, no.
- Don't worry about it.
I'm just going to ask you from memory then.
So there's a document and for the other justices,
this is record page 21.
It says on the top continued.
I had read that as that was a continuation
of your complaint and it starts,
"I am filing this gross negligence tort claim against
Mr. Souriyasong due to the fact that he and I had
discussed several times..."
And then you go on, you
know with a variety of allegations.
Was that it's kind of,
it describes a lot of things about your experience
driving some of your symptoms from the, you know,
allegation of carbon monoxide disclosure.
And then, you know, ends up with the allegation of him
firing you ends up.
"Thank you for your time in this matter,
Ms. Jamie M. Gilreath."
Was that a document that
you submitted with your complaint?
- I do believe so.
Yes.
- Okay. Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- That's the end of my question.
- Okay.
Consistent with Matthews versus Eldridge, there was
a private interest, livelihood, civil damages,
risk of erroneous deprivation,
and no procedural safeguards used,
which causes structural error.
Issue two, default judgment without process,
even assuming default Alaska's civil
rule 55 B.2 requires procedural safeguards
when damages are liquidated.
There was no hearing,
no evidence taken, no findings.
Damages were reduced from $100,000
to $346.30 without explanation.
The use of abuse of discretion cleanly is
discretion must be exercised, not assumed.
Issue number three, reliance on
unrelated civil records.
The trial court improperly relied on records from an
unrelated eviction matter in which I later prevailed.
Facts, not in evidence
cannot substitute for adjudication.
Issue number four, ignored claims.
The courts also failed to address entire categories
of pleaded claims, including retaliation
for OSHA reporting, gross negligence,
intentional torts, employment misclassification,
and payment with counterfeit currency.
Failure to rule is reversible error.
- I thought on at least one of those,
the judge did award you $20 based on the, excuse me,
the counterfeit currency based claim.
- I do believe that that is involved in the $340,
or included with the $346.30.
I did not receive any of the,
the actual, damage amounts.
still to this day, I know that that is a federal
offense, like to pay somebody with counterfeit money.
It didn't happen once.
It happened multiple times with Mr. Souriyasong.
my husband actually would do my paperwork
at the end of my, my shifts every day.
And he's the one who
actually noticed the counterfeit money.
So with the $20 bill that I had,
as you can see in my excerpt of record,
I did try to copy that to show that.
I did submit the actual,
the counterfeit $20 bill to the lower courts
here in Kodiak, Alaska.
- Okay.
- Okay.
This case was decided without hearings, without a jury,
without findings and without due process.
I respectfully asked this court to reverse the judgment
and remand for proceedings consistent
with the Alaska law.
That is all I have, Your Honor.
- Okay.
You can stop there.
There's, you want to take a moment and just double
check, make sure you haven't missed anything.
You've still got five and a half minutes,
but if you don't want to use it, that's perfectly fine.
We won't keep you here
and make you any more anxious.
[crosstalk]
- I'm sorry. I have no problem writing things,
but when it comes to talking, I get so anxious.
I'm so sorry.
- You have nothing to be sorry for.
- Okay.
- Would you like to stop here?
- Yes, I would.
And I thank you all for your time.
Absolutely.
- You're welcome.
And so we'll end this hearing now and we will be in
recess until 11 when we go back in court
to do another hearing.
Thank you very much.
- Thank you so much for your time.
- Bye now.
Shall we reconvene in our conference?