Homeless man who is suing all the federal judges in Boston learns there are limits to how far the judiciary will let him go

A homeless Boston man who spends his days suing everybody he can think of sued all the federal judges in Boston and Worcester - and one in Maine - for alleged corruption and fraud in July, prompting the chief judge for the eastern New England judicial district to assign a judge from New Hampshire to hear his case.

Friedrich Lu, who lists St. Francis House as his address, sought to have Judge Joseph LaPlante, who normally hears cases in Concord, NH, booted from the case, because he's in the same First Circuit district as the Boston judges - as is the judge in Maine once assigned to one of his earlier cases. Lu, who filed pro se, demanded that First Circuit Chief Judge David Barron appoint a judge from outside the First Circuit, which would mean a judge not sitting anywhere in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico or Rhode Island.

LaPlante ruled today that enough is enough, and he's not going to recuse himself:

The plaintiff has not provided a legally sufficient or validly supported reason for disqualification or recusal, nor has he shown that the undersigned's assignment to preside over this case was somehow improper or invalid.

LaPlante said he fully agreed with an eight-page legal memorandum on behalf of all the judges - written by an assistant US Attorney in Concord, acting as defense counsel for the judges - that Lu waited too long under recusal rules to ask LaPlante to remove himself, that, in any case, he failed to prove that LaPlante shown any "actual bias or prejudice" and that absent that, there are well established rules for letting Barron choose a judge in his circuit to hear the case.

As he does in the more recent of his cases against judges in a litigious career dating to the 1990s, Lu composed an alleged conspiracy of judges, all of whom he accuses of hating him, to deny him justice in his earlier cases. In the complaint, which is stained with coffee or some other substance, Lu makes it clear that as much as he thinks the judges hate him, he hates them even more:

Upon learning of the Oct. 26, 2020 death of Circuit Judge Juan R. Torruella months after the fact, Lu cursed, "Good riddance!"

When not suing the judiciary - he has also sued the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court - Lu regularly crafts legal complaints against a range of other Boston-area institutions, which have included the Boston Public Library, MIT, Harvard, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston Police, Boston College, Suffolk County and the US Attorney's office in Boston.

A somewhat cursory review of his judicial record shows he has yet to win a case. He came close in 2012, when a federal jury agreed the way he got frisked at Boston College three years earlier violated his rights - and awarded him damages of a dollar. But two years later, the US Court of Appeals for the First District overturned the jury award, saying the officer had "qualified immunity" against a suit because he was properly conducting his job during an investigation into a crime.

Even before this case, judges have signaled they are somewhat tired of Lu: Standing orders in both the federal and state court systems are supposed to require Lu to win permission from a judge before he can even file a suit. Lu, however, sometimes disregards the orders and files new suits anyway.