Justice by Exhaustion: How Nashua’s Courts Protect Power and Punish Dissent

Part II — Busy, Burdened, and Broke

From the outside, the court seemed to be managing a docket. In reality, it was managing appearances. No one, not the judge nor the City’s lawyers, acknowledged that the process itself had become unjust. The goal was never to expedite, but to delay.

Inside City Hall, word had already spread that an “obnoxious woman” was suing for public records. My insistence on transparency was treated as personal defiance. In Nashua’s tight legal network, where judges, city attorneys, and well-connected firms move in the same orbit, independence gives way to loyalty.

While the case languished, costs soared. The City’s lawyers, without hesitation, consumed taxpayer money, confident the court would indulge their delays. Hearings came and went with little progress. Justice turned into choreography, motions, continuances, extensions, while evidence aged and faith in fairness disappeared.

So began what I came to call the game of Busy, Burdened, and Broke.

·       Busy, because endless motions and rescheduled hearings consumed time and energy.

·       Burdened, because the rules bent one way for the City and another for me.

·       Broke, because every delay drained both personal savings and public funds (blamed on me) while no one in authority was held to account.

When a scheduled merits hearing was quietly converted into a status conference, I realized I couldn’t keep paying lawyers to play a rigged game. I would represent myself. I thought truth and law would be enough.

That decision exposed a deeper bias. Judges who already disliked citizens challenging government became noticeably less patient with those who dared to do it alone. I was treated less like a participant in democracy and more like a courtroom inconvenience.

In 2022, the City brought in outside counsel: Russ “Holiday” Hilliard of Upton & Hatfield. Though largely retired, he appeared just long enough to multiply filings and request delays, which the court granted without hesitation. Each postponement was another month of taxpayer-funded billing and another barrier between the public and the truth. Hilliard’s strategy was simple: bury the citizen in paper and procedure. Answers to a lawsuit arrived nearly a year after the court-ordered deadline; mediation was ignored altogether. The judge looked the other way.

In any well-functioning system, that pattern would raise ethical concerns. In Nashua, it was business as usual. Seniority and status carried more weight than compliance or candor. The red carpet was rolled out for Bar Number 1159, while the citizen who paid the bills was told to wait.

So, I tried a new approach: filing short, focused petitions for access to records. I lost everyone. The odds of total failure in a system built to protect transparency should be impossible. Yet Nashua’s courts operate less on law than on loyalty. When the City failed to comply, judges offered another opportunity to “cure” the problem. When I pressed too hard, I became the problem.

What began as one woman’s attempt to access public records became a lesson in how institutions protect themselves. Today, my first RTK case from 2020 is still ongoing. It may close in 2026, six years later. The money is gone, but the lesson remains: in Nashua, the courts don’t need to rule against you to defeat you. They only need to make the process unbearable.

Because in this system, justice isn’t denied outright; it’s delayed until you can no longer afford to pursue it. And that’s how the system wins.