I'm looking for a single correct thing in your post, and, while I respect your view, I still haven't found it.
1) If you believe a crime has been committed, you report it to criminal authorities. This what DiPiero did.
2) The conduct may also be reported to the Florida bar. And, for all we know, it has been. But your comment that the lawyer's conduct is "clearly a basis for immediate suspension or disbarment" is just flat wrong. There is no such thing as "immediate suspension or disbarment." Even for much more egregious violations. Bar complaints and lawyer discipline are long, drawn out processes in which the lawyer is entitled a full chance to respond and a hearing before he can be disciplined. The Florida bar would first conduct its own investigation. (Bars have their own versions of prosecuting attorneys.) That alone can take up to a year or more. The bar of Florida is not going to immediately "disbar" anyone. The policy implications of doing so would be horrible. Every lawyer in every case would start flying in with allegations about his opposing counsel to get them off a case. The thing to do when a lawyer acts in a criminal manner is report it to criminal authorities who can move much more quickly than the state bar, which is glacial by comparison.
3) You say, "This is a civil case, and it will go on for a long time (years in battery cases)." You seem to be confused about the difference between filing a tort or personal injury case (which she has NOT done) and filing an application for order of protection (which she HAS done). An application for order of protection MUST be heard within 15 days -- a full hearing. It's not like an ordinary civil trial. Either a hearing has to be held on Jan. 28 at which Moss can be heard, or she will have to dismiss her complaint. And a decision will be reached immediately on Jan. 28, or the next day. (The injunction actually expires on Jan. 29, so the judge gave himself an extra day if he needs it.)
4) Finally you say, "None of this dirt is relevant and gag orders can be placed on irrelevant material discovered to prevent public disclosure." Actually, again, no and no. In an order of protection case the "dirt" stuff is highly relevant. Particularly claims about weapons. Similarly, these are public proceedings and rarely, if ever, sealed or closed to the public. There is a heavy presumption of public access to judicial proceedings, and they are virtually never closed unless there are trade secrets involved.
I say this gently and with good humor, but leave the legal discussion to the professionals. Everyone says they hate us lawyers, why does everyone want to act like one?
I too will respond gently. First, I am an attorney, and one who has worked as an attorney for state and federal judges for a few years. My point in writing my comment was to raise the question to non-lawyers in an informal manner about administrative action (reasonably, if DiPietro is talking about all steps he took, why did he omit calling the conduct in question before the bar?) It was not intended to start a legal procedure discussion.
With that said, there are a number of species of orders poorly identified as TROs. Family courts may have protective orders that are independent of civil cases. Criminal courts have similar provisions that may issue with the filing of a criminal complaint. All motions I have encountered as TROs (usually preceding a preliminary injunction) accompany the filing of a civil complaint. As I was speaking generally and not to Florida procedures, Florida may have some quirky civil procedure existing entirely unto itself. I do not and did not claim to have analyzed any Florida procedure.
As for grievance procedures, maybe you have a different system but in 5 states I have never seen a criminal procedure move faster than a frievance procedure. Due process applies to both, as does the right to appeal, but criminal procedures run years (6 month clocks do not necessarily mean trial in 6 months - look to all possible exceptions as well) and deal with all defendants, grievances are substantially fewer in number unless Arizona is a well-spring of grievances.
As you would also be aware as an attorney, TROs do not involve intensive fact-finding. They are status quo procedures usually within the course of a trial. When I referred to ultimate resolution, I was referring to civil trials and those take years, not months. As for dismissals, there are generally three types: voluntary by a plaintiff, involunary by a court, and voluntarily by settlement.
Whether in discovery or during trial, there are agreements by attorneys that are submitted by courts to keep private information private (surprisingly, I have actually seen these utilized quite a bit). While there is a presumption of public access to court records (and there are in fact plenty of grounds in civil cases other than trade secrets), parties do not have to allow access to discovery (in fact, discovery is typically not part of a public record). And my reference to "dirt" being disclosed obviously was not intended to indicate you can stop a party from writing a novel or that orders are readily available, it was more intended to state that a good judge will not allow irelevancies to come out at trial (the bedrock standard of admission is relevance to a claim, in this case the tort of battery). And if you can say that courts cannot be closed and that gag orders cannot issue, then I will be happy to point you to actual case law to the contrary.
Again, while I respect your concerns, my comment was intended to simply raise a question in a non-legal forum, not invite a legal critique (and a substantially debatable critique at that). While I am happy to discuss the legalities of this case offline, I would respectfully point out that if you see actual legal terms and procedures you may have run across in law school or in your court dealings referenced, you may actually be addressing an attorney (or the express statement "any attorney knows", which might seem a tad presumptuous if I was not, in fact, an attorney). Although I have written and edited law review articles, I tend to come here for sports talk and leave the hardcore legal analysis at the office.
