Judge Hinkle’s Rule 12 Roadmap

Luthmann Says GERM’s Fast-Food Fee Grab Just Hit the Gator’s Mouth

LUTHMANN NOTE: GERM’s crew wanted a funeral procession in Gainesville Federal Court. They got a treasure map. Judge Hinkle’s May 7 Order did not hand Jeremy Hales and Randy “Pocket Rocket” Shochet the money bag. It told me to respond under Rule 12, and Rule 12 is where defective service, jurisdiction, and dismissal arguments live. That means the service issue is alive and well. Hales wanted fast-food justice: pull up, yell into the speaker, collect fees with fries. That is not a federal court. That is content-farm clownery. The gator is awake, the docket has receipts, and GERM’s fee grab looks cooked. This piece is “Judge Hinkle’s Rule 12 Roadmap.”

By Frankie Pressman with Richard Luthmann

Hales Wanted a Win. Luthmann Says the Order Gave Him the Weapon.

(GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA) – Richard Luthmann walked onto Two Lees in a Pod with Lisa Lee and Robbie Keszey and did what the Hales ecosystem hates most: he read the actual order, followed the procedural trail, and stripped the spin down to the studs.

The Jeremy Hales crowd wanted Judge Robert L. Hinkle’s May 7 Order packaged as a Luthmann loss. They wanted the headline before the law, the victory lap before the ruling, and the YouTube confetti before anyone asked what the judge actually said.

Luthmann’s answer was simple: slow down, GERM. The order is not the funeral. It is the roadmap.

Yes, Judge Hinkle denied Luthmann’s motion to clarify or reconsider the April 24 order allowing Hales to file a Third Amended Complaint. But that is not where the story ends. It is where the real story begins.

The critical language was not the denial. It was the command. The court said Luthmann “may—indeed, must—respond to the third amended complaint,” and that he may do so by filing an answer or a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12.

That sentence matters. Rule 12 is not window dressing. It is the front door for defenses like insufficient process, insufficient service of process, lack of personal jurisdiction, and failure to state a claim.

In plain English, the service fight is still alive. It was not finally adjudicated, magically cured by Hales’ wishcasting, or washed clean by Shochet’s fast-food fee motion. Hinkle told Luthmann to respond, and Rule 12 is exactly where Luthmann says the defective-service fight belongs.

Judge Hinkle’s Rule 12 Roadmap: Fast-Food Fees, Premature Motions, and Pocket Rocket Procedure

That is why Luthmann says Jeremy “GERM” Hales and Randall “Pocket Rocket” Shochet blew their procedural wad too early. Their motion seeking service-related expenses and attorney’s fees under Rule 4(d) depends on a premise they have not won: that Luthmann was properly served, improperly refused a waiver, or somehow caused unnecessary expenses by playing hide-and-seek with the process server circus.

Luthmann’s filings say the opposite. He says the waiver effort was defective, the address theory was contradictory, the email service was not authorized, and the underlying service question remained unresolved.

The problem for Hales is timing. You do not get to ask the court to hand you service fees while the service issue is still on the table. That is like demanding the trophy during warmups.

Luthmann’s opposition put it bluntly: Hales wants Rule 4(d)(2) money on a service theory the court has never squarely blessed. That is not a clean claim for costs. That is a premature money grab dressed up as motion practice.

On Two Lees, Luthmann translated the docket into language normal people can understand. First, he said he wanted to engage in the agreed-upon alternative dispute resolution with Jeremy Hales. But he’s worried that he may not get the chance because a Rule 12 motion might get the whole case chucked.

Next, Luthmann detailed that Hales and Shochet tried to turn the Gainesville federal courthouse into a drive-thru window. They wanted to pull up, bark into the speaker, order fees and costs, and collect a bag of cash with fries on the side.

But the federal court is not McDonald’s. Judge Hinkle did not hand them a Happy Meal, say service was valid, or award them money. He told Luthmann to respond to the new complaint, and specifically left open the path for a Rule 12 motion.

That is the part that the Hales ecosystem cannot spin away. If Rule 12 is live, service is live. If the service is live, the fee motion is premature. And if the fee motion is premature, GERM’s big courtroom order-at-the-counter routine may be headed straight into the fryer.

Judge Hinkle’s Rule 12 Roadmap: POLAMOP Meets the Gator: The Next Fight Is Rule 12

Luthmann’s declaration drilled deeper into the defects. He appeared specially and stated he did not waive objections to service, process, or personal jurisdiction. He declared he never signed or returned a Rule 4 waiver, never agreed to email service, and never authorized any lawyer, process server, agent, or third party to accept service for him.

He pointed to contradictory service attempts across Florida and New York and argued that substitute service through the Florida Secretary of State was unavailable because he was a Florida resident with a publicly ascertainable Naples address, not some hidden nonresident ducking papers in the swamp.

That is where the story moves from civil procedure to what Luthmann calls POLAMOP: Protraction of Litigation and Multiplication of Proceedings. In his view, Hales and Shochet are not simply litigating. They are manufacturing courtroom noise for content. They create procedural drama, turn filings into YouTube fodder, and then act shocked when someone holds up a mirror.

Luthmann’s filing made the point visually with the now-famous fast-food counter exhibit: Hales and Shochet mocked up as counter clerks asking, “Would you like fries with that?” It was satire, but like the best satire, it cut because it captured the behavior.

Additionally, Luthmann says Hinkle ducked a simple due-process fix: send him an electronic notice so a pro se litigant is not waiting days for paper orders to crawl from Gainesville or Pensacola to Naples while represented parties get instant docket alerts. Instead, Luthmann joked, the court keeps burying him in paper, turning basic notice into a tree-killing campaign where forests die so the Northern District can avoid clicking “send.”

Luthmann also blasted Hinkle for sidestepping what he calls the “batshit crazy” finding from the late Judge Jack B. Weinstein — not as an insult from the peanut gallery, but as part of a prior federal-court record Luthmann says bears on how he should be treated as a pro se litigant.

In Luthmann’s telling, if a legendary federal judge once found that his legal training was compromised by mental-health issues, Hinkle cannot pretend he is dealing with a polished lawyer while also denying him basic electronic notice and forcing him to fight blind through snail mail.

The May 7 Order now sets the next battlefield. Luthmann says the path is Rule 12. That means insufficient service, jurisdictional defects, and the legal sufficiency of Hales’ Third Amended Complaint can be put directly before the court. That is not a minor procedural skirmish. That is the alligator’s mouth opening under the dock.

Hales wanted immediate money. Shochet wanted a shortcut. The ecosystem wanted a victory lap. Luthmann says Judge Hinkle gave them none of it.

Instead, the judge confirmed the next fight, and that fight is Rule 12. If service remains contested, GERM’s fee grab is not just weak. It may be dead on arrival.