Philip Christian Bikle of Anaheim believes he's not required to possess a state license to drive and that the public should be free to use roads without interference from police.
But Bikle isn't just a talker.
He's been willing to maintain his stance while facing armed government agents.
In October 2011, for example, Bilke was involved in an accident at the Hawaiian Gardens Casino parking lot and told a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) deputy that he didn't need a drivers license, registration, license plate or auto insurance because he “wasn't engaged in commerce transporting persons or property.”
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He also considered his vehicle code ticket invalid because, he opined, the deputy is “not licensed to practice law” and violated the U.S. Constitution by restricting his right to travel freely.
The entire encounter with the deputy was part of a “long standing, pervasive pattern of lawlessness” at LASD, according to Bilke.
In October, he paid the $400 filing fee and filed a 30-page lawsuit in federal court against the deputy, the City of Lakewood and the LASD.
“Plaintiff demands an injunction against defendants to halt all systemic actions of denial of due process and the systematic and fraudulent violations of the public right to travel on the right-of-ways, in an automobile, which includes being coerced into obtaining a license for the business of transportation to avoid being criminally charged with driving without a license,” he wrote while serving as his own lawyer. “The plaintiff and the general public will suffer irreparable harm by denial of this injunction. We will suffer insult, degradation and deprivation of personhood by denial of this injunction.”
He sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as a jury trial.
But this month U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, who is based inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse and routinely handles complex criminal and civil cases, reviewed Bilke's complaint, declared the claims “frivolous” and dismissed the lawsuit.
I'm guessing we'll hear again from this plaintiff.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.