Alaska Supreme Court says a judge may remove a plaintiff from his own trial, after warnings

Alaska judges can throw a disruptive party out of a civil trial, even the person who brought the lawsuit, the state Supreme Court ruled for the first time this summer, as long as the judge warns them first and weighs their interest in staying against the other side's right to a fair trial.

The case started as a property dispute. Dion Humphrey sued his Anchorage neighbors, saying their retaining wall crossed onto his lot. He represented himself, as did one of the neighbors, Robert Reges, a lawyer.

At trial, Humphrey "interrupted proceedings, argued with the court, and disregarded the court's explanations and instructions," Chief Justice Carney wrote. The judge twice restricted him to appearing by videoconference and warned that another interruption would get him removed. When he kept unmuting himself, she removed him.

She left him a way to finish, though. He could still file a written closing argument and get a recording of the rest of the trial, and he later submitted proposed findings. That mattered to the Supreme Court, which noted his removal "did not foreclose his final opportunity to present arguments."

Humphrey appealed, arguing the exclusion violated his right to due process. The court agreed that right to be present is real but held it is weaker in civil cases than criminal ones, and that his conduct had interfered with the neighbors' right to a fair trial. The trial judge was within her authority to remove him.

On the merits, the neighbors won: the court found the wall stood entirely on their property and upheld an award of attorney's fees against Humphrey. The justices declined to consider his other arguments, ruling he had waived them by citing no law to support them. "Even self-represented litigants must provide more than a cursory statement to be considered on appeal," the court wrote.