- [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, Mr. Booker.
We are now on the record in court in the case of
Benjamin Booker versus Kaylen Tyson.
Ms. Tyson is not participating, so you have
15 minutes to tell us whatever you think we
need to hear.
We have read your brief and the excerpt and gone
through the record, so don't feel like you have to just
summarize your brief,
but you may tell us whatever you think is important
for us to hear.
We are likely to ask you questions,
so we're not doing that just to rattle you,
but that's kind of how we work.
Okay?
- [Mr. Booker] Thank you.
Good morning.
May it please the court.
My name is Benjamin Booker, and I'm appearing pro se.
As a pro se appellant,
it's an honor to be able to address the highest court
in Alaska, and I'd like to
thank you for this opportunity.
Before I begin to discuss some of the issues of the
appeal, do Your Honors have any specific agenda that
you would prefer this oral argument to take
or any initial questions that I can address?
- It's up to you.
We're likely to ask questions as they occur
to us while you speak to us.
- Understood.
Okay.
As Your Honors are aware from familiarizing yourself
with the case, the primary issue here, I believe,
is just the personal jurisdiction issue.
Sorry.
And so, as is clear in the case,
I am not a resident of Alaska,
have been a resident of Colorado since 2016,
and I do have a daughter that lives in Alaska.
- Mr. Booker, at some...
- Go ahead, Chief Justice.
- Mr. Booker, at some time in the past,
you did live here, is that right?
- Yeah, so Ms. Tyson and I
actually met in Alaska originally.
We moved to Colorado from 2010 until 2014.
She relocated back to Alaska in August of 2014.
I joined her in the summer of 2015.
We were not in a relationship at that time,
but to be near to my daughter,
I relocated to Wasilla and then relocated back to,
first, California and then Colorado in fall of 2016.
- [Justice Pate] Were you a resident during that year
that you lived in Alaska?
- Yes, I was a resident during that year.
- Thank you.
- Yeah, based on the UCCJEA reading of being there
for six months, I did establish residency there.
And so, I'd basically been
a part of our daughter's life.
I was there present for her birth in March of 2015
and had continual contact with our daughter,
whether it was living together for the first year of
her life and just co-parenting in the same household.
Kind of an unusual relationship,
but it worked out well co-parenting.
And so, had continued relationship with our daughter
until fall of 2021, at which time Ms. Tyson
essentially terminated the relationship.
From fall of 2021 through the end of 2023,
I had attempted to work out a situation,
an amicable custody arrangement with
Ms. Tyson outside of court that was not successful.
And so, filed the petition for custody and visitation
in the Anchorage court in December of 2023.
Approximately one month later, around
January 23, 2024, Ms. Tyson
filed ex parte DVPO on a short-term basis,
which was denied.
About that same time,
Your Honors issued the decision in Armstrong
versus Chance on January 19, 2024.
And I was subsequently served the long-term DVPO
documents in Colorado on February 5, 2024.
The initial long-term hearing was calendared
in error for February 7, 2024.
And so, it was basically rescheduled to March 5, 2024.
At that time, I was familiar as a pro se litigant,
I was familiarizing myself with the process
and the statutes.
And filed my first response to the DVPO,
this case before us,
as a notice that the court take judicial notice
of the Armstrong versus Chance decision,
initially raising the potential issue
of personal jurisdiction at that time.
The following day, the evidentiary hearing was held,
at which time I immediately raised the issue of lack
of personal jurisdiction.
It would be essentially an oral motion to dismiss.
And so, I raised that issue twice with the trial court.
- Mr. Booker, you raised that issue after having filed
a response to the complaint or the petition, correct?
- I did never file a response in this case.
Prior to that time, there was a number of filings back
and forth in the separate custody case regarding things
like appointing a child custody investigator and
addressing some of those issues in that separate case.
- Didn't you file a respondent's opposition
to petitioner's request for domestic
violence protective orders?
- I believe that, I'd have to double check, I'm sorry,
because that's not part of this case's
excerpt of record.
I believe that was filed in the other case.
- Wasn't it filed, wasn't it also,
what's the case number here for this case?
Isn't it 172 CI?
The respondent, the document I just told you about,
that title is filed under that case number as well,
which is the DV petition.
- It's filed in both. Okay. Gotcha.
- That was filed before you raised
the issue of personal jurisdiction, correct?
- So, for some reason,
and I'm not sure why that is not a part of this,
I'm sorry, there, yeah.
What I raised in that is the issue of, actually,
I apologize, I don't see that as part of this case
as the excerpt of record, or the record,
so I apologize, but in that issue, in that opposition,
I brought up the fact that I
was not a resident of Alaska.
The, I believe that was filed
on the 7th of February 2024.
At the time, it had only been a matter of days
or so that Your Honors issued the decision
in Armstrong versus Chance.
And so, at the time,
it wasn't clear that a personal jurisdiction objection
was possible until that Armstrong v. Chance was,
decision was issued just a few days before.
- And then you also attended a hearing before,
scheduling hearing of some sort in the DV case
before you raised your objection
regarding personal jurisdiction, correct?
- So, there was a calendar error on February 7th.
Immediately at that hearing, it was rescheduled.
The trial court judge said that there was a mistake
in calendaring it, so there was no arguments or
anything like that.
It was solely to let us know that it was
calendared an error and rescheduled.
- But you did ask, at that hearing,
you did ask for a dismissal.
You asked for relief for dismissal of the petition and
did not reference personal jurisdiction, correct?
- On the first hearing where we were...
evidentiary hearing on March 5th?
- No, in February before
you raised personal jurisdiction.
- I honestly, well, like I said,
because that's not part of this record,
I don't have access to that, so I apologize.
I thought that was part of the custody case.
- I think that part of the problem here
is that the joint, we have a one family,
one judge rule here where we have our custody cases
if there's a companion DV case.
They're often heard together,
so it's under both case numbers.
- Okay, I see.
Well, so I, in that case, I'm not sure, well,
as I said, this, it's some of that,
those documents are not part of the record
that I'm looking at since it was only generated
for this 172 number.
- Mr. Booker, I realized,
it sounds like you have a copy of the,
your opposition to the petitioner's
request for domestic violence.
You have a copy in front of you?
If you don't, that's okay.
I thought it sounded like, okay, nevermind then,
because you said that you stated you weren't a resident
in that, and I was going to ask you
to point me to exactly where that was,
but if you don't have it in front of you, don't worry.
I can read it through.
- Okay, yeah, I haven't seen that in some time.
When I thought I had a copy of it,
it was the opposition filed by Ms. Tyson,
opposition to respondent's
motion to reconsider.
That's what I was looking at, filed March 21st,
so I was looking at a different document.
I don't have opposition, my opposition in front of me.
And so, but essentially, you know,
in this case, let me get back to it.
I apologize, get back to where I was.
Okay, so it was, I will, as Your Honors
are more aware of than even I am, that,
you know, in Brecht versus Ulmer,
the Supreme Court allowed that pro se litigants should
be held to a less stringent
standard than those of lawyers.
At that time, and in fact,
I'll note that in the domestic violence petition
documents themselves, DV100 and DV114, there's never,
there's not even a reference to jurisdiction
generally in those.
And so, as a pro se litigant receiving those documents,
you're kind of under the assumption that you have
to respond in some way relatively quickly.
And so, as soon as I was served
on February 5th, I attempted to respond.
And then, but it was my understanding that regardless
of the response, there would be a oral argument,
which there was.
At that oral argument, that's,
you know, given the time to prepare for that,
discovered the Armstrong versus Chance order.
Essentially, I, by filing the request of the court to
take jurisdiction of Armstrong versus Chance,
and then during the March 5th oral argument,
I immediately raised that issue.
Essentially, I was making an amendment
to any opposition or, that I had at that point,
or an amendment to the notice to take judicial,
sorry, the request to take judicial notice
in Armstrong versus Chance.
There's a variety of cases around the country,
like Blake versus Gilbert in 1985.
And that basically said that delay alone is not
insufficient reason to deny a motion to amend.
And in that case, there was a 40-month,
41-month-delay in raising defenses.
As it is, it had only been, I think,
like I said before, a couple of weeks since Armstrong
versus Chance was issued.
And so, as a pro se litigant,
it did take time to familiarize myself with the
statutes and the civil,
the statutes and the court rules and case precedent.
Had I been, I mean, actually,
I believe that the attorney, the opposing attorney,
was not even familiar on March 5th
with the Armstrong precedent.
So, as a pro se, you know,
some leniency to kind of get up to speed with the way
the process works.
And there was not a significant delay between the time
these things were filed and the time that we had
the initial hearing.
I believe that there's a few cases,
including Adams versus NW Company International,
and Klinghoffer versus SNC that basically says that a
party's consent to jurisdiction in one case extends
to that case alone.
The limited immunity statute in Alaska and the UCCJEA,
coupled with those Supreme Court and appellate
court decisions, essentially, you know,
allow the immunity defense to be raised
in this separate case.
- Mr. Booker, you're referring to the UCCJEA section
that says that simply participating in the child
custody case doesn't necessarily subject you
to the jurisdiction for other things in this case,
like the domestic violence case, correct?
- Correct.
As long as it was only addressing custody and
visitation, it would fall under that limited immunity.
There's very few cases that I could find that address
the limited immunity of the UCCJEA nationwide.
Francisco versus Sia in Maryland from 2015 is one,
and essentially had said that if the defendant had only
responded to the custody and visitation issues,
limited immunity would have been maintained,
but he went outside of that with requests
for genetic testing and that kind of thing.
And so, in this case, I've solely,
except for defending myself in the long-term DVPO case,
I've only stuck to the custody
and visitation matters in the other case.
- Mr. Booker, did you raise the provision
regarding immunity under the UCCJEA?
Did you raise that with the Superior Court?
I didn't see that.
- I raised just personal jurisdiction objections,
and then, you know, I will say that as, you know,
it's a judge's duty to be familiar with the law,
and once that issue had been raised,
the judge perhaps should have sua sponte,
at least analyzed the personal jurisdiction.
- Well, right now, actually the law is we're
here at the appellate level is plain error.
It typically is what would happen is that you didn't
raise it below, and so now we have to look and see
if the, you know, error was obvious, prejudicial,
there's a certain test we need to look at it,
and so that's where it's at now.
- Understood.
I know we're over time.
- Yep.
- You may take a moment or two to just sum up for us
because we asked you the questions that took you
beyond the 15 minutes,
so take it take a minute now.
- Understood.
You know, as a pro se litigant,
it's my understanding that these are
two separate cases.
Even if the case is held simultaneously
by the same judge, these are by definition,
like Black's Law Dictionary, a legal...
this is a separate legal proceeding,
and so when you look at solely
the domestic violence long-term restraining order,
the first time and pleading or motion in that case
was the notice to take judicial notice,
and then the following day
immediately raised that issue.
I would ask that some leniency be considered
as is allowed for a pro se litigant,
and that I didn't unduly delay any of these proceedings
and raised the objection as soon as I was able
to familiarize myself with the proceedings.
As I said, February 5th, I received the documents,
and February 7th was when that first
calendered hearing, and it would seem maybe
some, an injustice to expect a pro se litigant to fully
familiarize themselves with all of the silver rules
and Supreme Court precedents within two days.
And so, similar to the Armstrong case, I ask...
- Wrap it up.
Okay. I ask that the court grant relief as soon
as possible as they did Armstrong with a short
written order the day after in that case,
followed by a written,
the full written decision afterwards.
Thank you, Your Honors, for the time today.
- Thank you.
And as you probably know,
it will take us a while to make a decision
and set out our opinion.
Okay?
- Understood.
Thank you.
- Thank you for speaking with us today.
We are adjourned.