Chronology of Court Case Against TD Ameritrade

Laurent J. LaBrie v. TDAmeritrade

PRESS RELEASE: Reporting Corruption at Maryland District Court in Baltimore County

May 12, 2011

Anyone with a modest amount of assets available for litigation who takes a multi-billion dollar company to court is very much an underdog from day one. Facing the company's team of experienced litigation lawyers getting paid six figure salaries is an expected problem. But, he or she doesn't expect the court to use and rely upon new documents mysteriously replacing month old judgments in the dossier without the parties in the case being informed. Equally unexpected is the judge not publishing a judgment to all the affected parties until after the window for filing an appeal has passed. But, that is exactly what happened to Laurent La Brie at Maryland District Court in Towson, Maryland.

La Brie sued TD Ameritrade for removing, despite his objections, $15,174 from his brokerage account. Since January 2009, TD Ameritrade has been using this money as its own and seeks to continue to benefit from it as long as possible. Any stumbling block TD Ameritrade could use to delay an outside neutral decision maker (such as a court or an arbitration panel) from resolving the matter is in TD Ameritrade's interest.

TD Ameritrade apparently believed that it would get better results from an arbitration panel rather than a court. So, they tried to block La Brie's suit and force him into arbitration with a Motion to Compel Arbitration.

To push matters along and to get his money as soon as possible, La Brie decided not to just try to refuse "out of hand" TD Ameritrade's desire to arbitrate but agreed to not contest starting arbitration (thus possibly avoiding a long contest over procedural matters) so long as TD Ameritrade started the arbitration within 60 days.

So, La Brie filed a Statement of No Contest to the Arbitration and No Objection to the Stay of the Court proceeding "for a 60 day period ending November 1, 2010. But, [La Brie's] non objection was conditioned on [TD Ameritrade] within said 60 days, presenting to [La Brie] a confirmation from FINRA that FINRA has received the Claim for the $15,173.94."

As a side note, FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is the arbitrator for disputes clients have with brokers. TD Ameritrade's filing the Claim with FINRA is a necessary step for arbitration to proceed promptly. After reading the many published reports and court judgments LaBrie and his legal counsel agreed with TD Ameritrade's assessment that arbitration favors the financial corporations. Thus LaBrie desired to keep the claim in the court, the guardian of justice provided to every US citizen by the very Constitution that La Brie defended as an officer in the United States Army. But, since his family lacks the financial firepower to battle the corporation over this procedural matter, he motioned the aforementioned compromise.

On August 30, 2010, the Court published the ruling to the parties, granting La Brie's motion of compromise. Thus, the Court ruled that if the arbitration was not, in fact, started promptly, the matter would return to the court proceeding which he had initiated. Although not an ideal setting for justice to be served in this matter, La Brie was comforted that the process for a resolution to unauthorized transfer of his funds would proceed within 60 days. If the Court had ruled in favor of TD Ameritrade, La Brie would have contested the ruling, since TD Ameritrade had already once violated the arbitration agreement both parties had signed by removing the money instead of taking the dispute to arbitration. So, La Brie readily accepted the Court's ruling in his favor.

Thus, the next step was for TD Ameritrade to make the necessary filing with FINRA within 60 days and failing that the matter would go back to the District Court. TD Ameritrade even telephoned and wrote La Brie confirming that they understood the Court had ruled against them.

The 60 day period passed without TD Ameritrade satisfying the condition granted by the Court, so La Brie filed his Motion to Reschedule Trial. On December 3, 2010, TD Ameritrade wrote a memorandum in "Opposition to Plaintiff's Motion to Reschedule Trial." The Court scheduled a hearing on the matter. On December 29, 2010 La Brie sent a subpoena for the telephone recordings TD Ameritrade made of conversations with him so that he could use them as evidence in the hearing. On January 3, 2011, the Court ruled for La Brie and against Ameritrade, granting LaBrie's motion. This shows that the Court checked the dossier, saw the ruling in favor of La Brie, and knew that he had the right to proceed and Ameritrade had no right to stop it.

However, on January 14, 2011, TD Ameritrade started trying to convince the Court that it had made an "administrative error" and actually ruled in favor of TD Ameritrade instead of La Brie. However, such activity was not consistent with Maryland Rules 3-534 and 3-535 which gives parties only 30 days to petition the Court to revise its judgment. January 14, 2011 was 135 days after the Court had recorded its judgment, making the effort of TD Ameritrade faulty as outside of the legal period.

La Brie responded to TD Ameritrade's attempts to rewrite history and on February 1, 2011, the Court reconfirmed its ruling to continue, implying that the judge reviewed the entire dossier, saw the ruling in favor of La Brie, and knew that he had the right to proceed.

At the hearing on La Brie's motion to resume the Court case, held on March 11, 2011, another judge was given the docket. This new judge suddenly produced a document from the dossier not previously seen by the parties stating that the Court had actually ruled in favor of TD Ameritrade on August 30, 2010 instead of for La Brie. The latest judge could not reconcile the presence of this new document with the document originally sent by the Court to both La Brie and TD Ameritrade other than to state that the original was an error.

The judge also could not explain why the document was not seen in the file a second time on January 3 and a third time on February 1 when the Court knew it was within La Brie's right to continue to trial and granted La Brie's Motion to Continue. Clearly, the new document had not yet replaced the first ruling in La Brie's favor. Thus, one has to wonder whether this was simply a mistake that was repeated several times, which is bad enough for eroding confidence in the Court system, or someone trying to rewrite history to their benefit.

Regardless of what documents were in the dossier, to which neither La Brie nor Ameritrade had access to view, both parties acknowledged in writing and orally that they received and understood the Court's ruling of August 30, 2010 that La Brie's motion had been granted. Neither party submitted any objection to the Court within the period of time permitted by Maryland Rules 3-534 and 3-535. Thus, the Court should not have been able to change the ruling. La Brie asked for explanations of these mysterious events but has not received a good explanation.

Yet, this was just the beginning of the questionable practices of the Court.

After the Hearing on March 11, 2011, La Brie received rulings on two related issues but no ruling on his Motion to Continue to take the case to trial. On March 17, 2011, La Brie telephoned the Court and the Clerk said she would send the judgment. However, the clerk requested La Brie send a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) to receive the reasons for the judgment as she could not include them with the judgment. This provided another annoying minor injustice of costing unnecessary administrative time and eating into the days La Brie would have under Rules 3-534 and 3-535 to provide additional evidence or an appeal. But La Brie promptly did as requested.

After later receiving the unfavorable judgment with no justifying explanation for the judgment, La Brie telephoned the Court on March 24, 2011 and was told by a Clerk that, as is often the case at this Court, the Judge hadn't recorded his findings and reasons. She stated that La Brie would have to send another letter with SASE to request the Judge enter the reasons. At this point, the 10 days provided by Rule 3-534 had elapsed and further time had been lost under Rule 3-535.

On March 25, 2011, La Brie sent the request for the reasons. Since the end of the 30 day period allotted by Rule 3-535 was quickly approaching and he hadn't received a response that he could review and contest, La Brie also sent a memorandum to request an extension. The Court rejected his request for an extension.

The Judge didn't send his findings and reasons until April 12, a day after the period for appeal had expired and those reasons were in semi-legible handwriting on a sheet of paper with words crossed out and dated the day of the hearing.

Among the many mysteries are the following.