A man says he was jailed after challenging failures in his own case. The response should be an examination of those failures, not another reason to silence him.
Mark Foley’s application to the Michigan Supreme Court places failures of court service inside a larger account of restricted access and alleged retaliation. It alleges a system that restricted his ability to seek relief, failed to serve orders, and then incarcerated him after he challenged those failures in court. Alongside concerns about his access to medical care while incarcerated, his case demands scrutiny of what happens when someone keeps speaking out about Barry County.
I’ve been covering Michigan courts for four years now, and Barry County keeps returning me to the same question: why is correcting the problem so rarely what it chooses to do with its authority? Time after time, it puts its energy into managing, restricting, or punishing the person who raised the concern. Mark’s case brings the consequences of those choices into focus. What happened when Mark challenged the handling of his case? Could he meaningfully access the courts? What happened to his health while he was incarcerated? And why does the person asking for a problem to be corrected so often become the problem an institution chooses to address?
That last question is the through line in my reporting on Barry County. I have raised separate mail and service failures through administrative complaints, formal notice, and records requests. Mark’s case shows why those failures matter: access to an order can determine whether a person has a meaningful chance to challenge what happens next.
What Mark Says Happened When He Objected
Foley’s application gives a specific sequence. The Court of Appeals denied his request for superintending control on August 14, 2026. He says he was arrested on August 17 on a warrant he had not been served. On August 19, he appeared before Chief Judge William Doherty.
According to the application, Foley raised the failure to serve underlying orders and pointed to a written address correction dating back to 2022. He alleges that Doherty responded by summarily sentencing him to 30 days in jail. He characterizes that incarceration as retaliation for raising the service failures.
That allegation deserves direct examination. The hearing record and contempt order matter because they would allow a reviewer to assess what Foley said, what the judge identified as the basis for punishment, and whether the sanction punished misconduct or an effort to challenge the proceedings. The application’s account should not be substituted for that review. It should be a reason to undertake it.
A person should be able to question the exercise of government power without the question itself becoming grounds for punishment. If Mark was incarcerated for objecting to failures in his case, the issue reaches well beyond an administrative mistake.
Access to Court Has to Mean an Actual Way to Be Heard
Foley also describes restrictions that, taken together, allegedly narrowed his ability to challenge what was happening. His application says a November 23, 2022 order limited him to four filings per year, by mail only, and that another order prohibited court staff from responding to his emails. He says those orders were never served on him.
The same application alleges that the court continued using an incorrect mailing address after a deputy clerk acknowledged and corrected it in writing on October 3, 2022. Foley says an order was sent to the wrong address 23 days later and that misdirected mail continued into 2025.
The significance is the interaction between those allegations. A person restricted to filing by mail must be able to rely on an accurate mailing process. A person prohibited from getting email responses needs another workable way to resolve mistakes. And a person trying to challenge an order needs access to the order itself.
The mail issues I have raised in a separate Barry County case belong in this discussion. In that matter, the Prosecutor’s Answer to a Michigan Supreme Court application was due August 20, 2025, but was filed September 9. A December 22, 2025 SCAO letter, described in my reporting, confirmed that twenty-day gap. A separate MDOC records response, No. 26-956, reported no legal, privileged, or court-mail records for the incarcerated litigant during the August–October 2025 period requested.
The problem surfaced again around an August 11, 2026 order denying post-conviction relief. As detailed in my reporting, the motion appeared on the docket August 7 after an earlier filing, but the litigant did not receive the denial order. When I pursued the missing order, court administration pointed to the docket and standard copy fees and disclaimed responsibility for delivery after a document left the clerk’s office.
MDOC’s September 3, 2026 certified response, No. 26-1408, returned thirty pages in response to the request covering August 1–21. Most of that production consisted of MDOC policy. Only one page contained mail receipts, and it documented a church newsletter—not correspondence from Barry County. The production contained no receipt for the August 11 order. Its page count should not be mistaken for thirty pages of mail logs or evidence that court mail was being reliably logged. The response does not, by itself, establish where delivery failed or who caused it.
When I challenged the mailing, I also received notice from USPS that it had no record of it. That response belongs alongside the MDOC production: I sought verification from the postal service as well as the receiving institution, and neither response supplied a record establishing the mailing’s arrival. USPS’s notice that it had no record is a distinct finding; it should not be described as a definitive determination that no mailing occurred.
For Mark, the alleged failure was continued use of an address the court had already corrected. In the separate matter, the concern was an incarcerated litigant unable to obtain an order and receiving records that did not show its arrival. Both raise the same practical question: how is someone supposed to challenge a decision they cannot reliably receive? The answer is they can’t. And perhaps that’s the intent.
Each barrier makes the next one harder to overcome. Missing an order can impede a challenge. Restricted communications can make the missing order harder to obtain. A filing limit can constrain efforts to correct the record. Incarceration adds another obstacle to doing any of those things.
When someone reports a failure, the first institutional response should be to examine the failure. Making the complainant harder to hear does not make the complaint less serious.
He Describes Inadequate Care in Jail. Then Came the Hospital.
In Clutch Justice’s August 27 reporting, Mark described inadequate care at both Barry and Calhoun County jails. He said Barry County provided emergency blood-pressure medication twice but no wound care, while Calhoun County provided two adhesive bandages for an open foot wound.
According to that reporting, he was hospitalized with sepsis after his release. The account was provided by Mark and people close to him; the article said medical and jail records had been requested for independent confirmation. The sequence raises serious questions about his care without, by itself, establishing what caused the infection.
A jail sentence is measured in days on an order. The consequences of going without needed care can last much longer. Any examination of Mark’s incarceration should account for what happened to him while detained, as well as why he was put there.
Another County Took the Warnings Seriously
Clutch Justice’s June investigation reported that Calhoun County’s records and emergency intervention corroborated abuse and neglect concerns Mark had raised for years in Barry County. His Supreme Court application also cites that intervention as support for his account.
That matters to how Barry County’s treatment of him should be examined. The warnings had substance, according to the records described in that reporting. The public deserves an explanation of why his efforts to raise them met the restrictions and punishment he describes.
Calhoun County’s intervention does not establish every allegation about Barry County’s motives. It does make the habit of dismissing Mark as the problem harder to defend. Being persistent about a serious concern is a reason to examine the concern.
Barry County’s Response to Complaints Is the Larger Story
My concern is that Barry County keeps treating the people who complain as the problem to manage. Mark’s application describes the version of that concern with the highest immediate stakes: restrictions on seeking relief, followed by what he alleges was incarceration for objecting.
Calling someone difficult does not answer whether an order was served. Labeling filings excessive does not establish that the underlying complaint was addressed. Punishing a litigant does not correct an inaccurate address or explain why it remained in use.
These are different questions, and public accountability requires answers to the underlying failures. An institution’s frustration with a complainant cannot stand in for an explanation of its own conduct.
I have already taken the service concerns beyond a request at the counter. The record described in my reporting includes the December 2025 SCAO correspondence, a February 15, 2026 Notice of Intent to Sue identifying proof-of-service discrepancies, and an August 17, 2026 administrative complaint about repeated service and docket problems. Delivery and read-receipt records cited in that reporting show the February notice was opened by four recipients connected to county governance, insurance, and legal representation.
On September 7, I sent MMRMA a further notice with the certified MDOC production attached. The county’s risk-management chain had been alerted to the service concerns months before that latest notice. The question is what those recipients did to investigate and correct the process. Receipt of a notice does not prove what happened inside an office afterward, but it does establish an opportunity to act.
That is why the copy-fee response matters. A request to determine why an order did not reach someone calls for an examination of service. Offering a paid copy leaves that question unanswered. It puts the work of recovering from the failure back on the person affected by it.
The separate mail record does not establish retaliatory intent in Mark’s case. It gives the county another concrete set of service problems to answer for, alongside his allegations. Mark describes restrictions and punishment after he objected; my reporting describes repeated notice of delivery and docket concerns without an identified correction. The institutional response is part of the story in both.
The broader concern is what happens after a failure is brought to someone’s attention. Does the institution correct it, explain it, and prevent it from happening again? Or does it direct its energy toward limiting the person who keeps asking?
Clutch has explained Monell claims before. The principle is straightforward: under federal civil-rights law, a county can be held responsible when its own policy or established custom causes a violation of a person’s federal rights. A custom need not be written down. A practice sufficiently persistent and widespread can qualify. The county is not automatically liable for every wrong committed by someone working there. See Monell v. Department of Social Services and Connick v. Thompson.
That is why similar service failures across multiple cases matter, particularly when they continue after documented complaints. Repetition, notice to officials responsible for the practice, and a failure to correct it can support an argument that the problem has become an accepted way of operating. A claim still requires proof of a constitutional injury, a policy or custom attributable to the county, and a direct causal connection between the two. A court-rule violation alone is not enough, and neither multiple complaints nor notice to outside counsel automatically establishes those elements.
The question here is whether the reported failures deprived people of meaningful notice or court access, and whether an established practice caused that deprivation. Responsibility must also be traced to the official or entity controlling the function; an act occurring in a county courthouse is not automatically county policy. The record raises a custom-or-practice question worth investigating. It does not yet resolve a Monell claim. See Board of County Commissioners v. Brown.
The Attorney Defending the Court Was Already on Notice
Allan C. Vander Laan has filed an appearance in the Michigan Supreme Court proceeding. The supplied case-search entry identifies him, under bar number 33893, as attorney for the party listed as “BARRY CIRCUIT COURT JUDGE.” Mark has sent him a message in response to that appearance.
Vander Laan’s involvement belongs alongside the county’s history of notice. Clutch Justice previously reported on his May 5, 2023 letter confirming that Barry County had retained CMDA to respond to a grievance involving the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. That places him inside the county’s response to misconduct complaints more than three years before this Supreme Court application. The 2023 grievance concerned a separate matter; it does not establish that he knew every allegation in Mark’s case at that time.
The later notice is more specific to the service concerns discussed here. My reporting identifies Vander Laan among the recipients of the February 15, 2026 Notice of Intent to Sue, which raised proof-of-service discrepancies, and reports confirmation that he opened it. This is why his representation deserves attention: he was already receiving complaints about the county’s handling of legal process before being identified as counsel for the defendants in Mark’s proceeding.
In the message he sent, Mark contrasts Vander Laan’s Supreme Court appearance with what he says Doherty told him on August 19, 2026: that counsel had been retained and was choosing to ignore Court of Appeals Case No. 381330. Mark asks why counsel is now appearing in the Supreme Court over the same issues. He also requests the underlying orders, communications, and proof of service and mailing. His account of Doherty’s statement remains subject to verification against the hearing transcript.
When due process has already been impeded, continued barriers to obtaining orders and proof of service can quickly become a way to further damage the case. The person must overcome the original failure while struggling to obtain the very records needed to challenge it. Each additional delay can make meaningful review harder to obtain and allow the consequences of the earlier failure to accumulate.
The dates must remain straight: the COA panel denied relief on August 14, five days before the statement Mark attributes to Doherty. The August 19 account cannot establish that Swartzle joined the panel afterward or that the statement caused the denial. It does raise a question about how the court and its counsel understood and responded to Mark’s attempt to obtain outside review.
My concern is the continuity of the response. Complaints reached retained counsel in 2023. Specific service concerns reached him again in 2026. Now he is identified as representing the defendants in Mark’s proceeding. Retaining a defense attorney does not answer what was done to investigate or correct the failures reported along the way. Barry County and its counsel should be able to explain that response with records.
The Appellate Connections Also Belong in the Record
The August 14 order in Foley’s case identifies Matthew S. Ackerman, Brock A. Swartzle, and Anica Letica as the panel. Michael Gadola did not sit on it. But Swartzle received a campaign contribution from Gadola in 2020, as Clutch Justice’s September 3 investigation reported.
Gadola’s professional connections reach into Barry County’s political and judicial history. As Snyder’s legal counsel, he worked within the same senior executive structure as then-Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley. The September investigation traced both men through executive records, including a Detroit bankruptcy privilege log identifying them on the same senior-level communication. Calley had previously represented Barry County in the Michigan House, as the state’s legislative biography records.
The connection to former Barry County Judge James Fisher is direct. At the Michigan Supreme Court’s May 18, 2016 public hearing, Fisher said Gadola had contacted him five years earlier and asked him to chair the advisory commission that led to the legislation establishing the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission. That account appears on page 10 of the Court’s transcript. The 2011 appointment announcement identifies Fisher as a former chief judge of Barry County Trial Court and former county prosecutor.
Those are specific connections: shared executive work with a former Barry County legislator, personal recruitment of its former chief judge for a statewide justice initiative, and financial support for a judge who later sat on Mark’s panel. They belong in an account of the professional and political relationships surrounding appellate review of Barry County. They do not establish that Gadola participated in Foley’s decision, that any of these relationships influenced it, or that the contribution was reciprocal.
For Mark, the question remains whether his allegations received meaningful, independent scrutiny. Documenting these relationships gives readers context for examining that question; the panel’s handling of his application must still be assessed from the case record.
What Mark Is Asking the Supreme Court to Do
Foley’s application seeks review of the Court of Appeals’ August 14 decision and emergency intervention ahead of a September 16, 2026 hearing. He says he faces renewed incarceration. That is the risk described in his filing, not a prediction of what the court will do.
Among the relief he requests are a stay of proceedings and enforcement, production and service of orders and transcripts, relief from the challenged orders and restrictions, and review before an independent judge. These are requests for the Supreme Court to consider; the application itself does not establish that relief has been granted.
The immediate public-interest question is whether his allegations will receive meaningful review before further consequences are imposed. The longer-term question is whether that review will examine how the process became so difficult to challenge in the first place.
Mark’s Application Arrives Amid Wider Scrutiny of Barry County
The Michigan Supreme Court has more than one reason to examine what is happening in Barry County. Mark’s application arrives alongside other proceedings and records raising questions about the county’s courts. Those matters remain separate, but the concerns they present deserve to be considered in the broader public account of how Barry County uses its authority.
Dean Terry Myers’s supplemental filing has now been submitted, according to Clutch Justice’s latest reporting update. It raises the question of whether Judge Michael Schipper complied with the Supreme Court’s remand instructions. As Clutch previously reported, Schipper denied a new trial after remand, and the Supreme Court subsequently allowed Myers to add an issue and submit supplemental briefing. A denial after remand does not itself establish defiance; whether Schipper followed the Court’s directions is the issue requiring examination.
I have also placed correspondence concerning repeated service failures on the Supreme Court docket. My August reporting identifies July 8 as the date correspondence about the earlier service problem entered that record. MDOC’s FOIA responses supply a separate evidentiary basis for questioning receipt: the produced records do not document the mail at issue arriving. The absence of receipts for the court mail at issue—not the volume of policy pages returned—and the reported failures of delivery belong in the Court’s assessment of whether the affected litigant had a meaningful opportunity to participate.
Meanwhile, Clutch has published its investigation into Gadola’s appointment history and professional connections, raising questions about disclosure and conflict screening. Publication puts those questions before the public; it does not establish that the justices have read the article or that a recusal violation has been found.
Schipper is also the subject of renewed JTC staff review. The Commission’s August 11 letter, described in Clutch’s reporting, confirms that a Request for Investigation was assigned to staff. That is a review of the request, not confirmation of a newly authorized full investigation or a finding of misconduct.
My view is that this accumulation may help explain the urgency now surrounding Mark’s case. The quick response is worth watching in that context, but its timing does not tell us what prompted the Court or counsel to act. A filed appearance is also counsel’s action, not a Supreme Court ruling on the merits. What can be said is that Barry County’s handling of cases is being challenged through multiple records and channels at once. Mark’s allegations add another concrete account that calls for an answer.
Clutch Justice is preparing a motion for leave to file an amicus curiae brief in support of Mark Foley’s Supreme Court application. The brief will bring the separately documented mail and service concerns into the broader discussion of meaningful court access, institutional notice, and the response to people who report failures.
If your organization has documented experience with barriers to court access, failures of service, or retaliation against people seeking judicial relief in Michigan, consider seeking permission to submit an amicus brief. Relevant experience from other counties can help explain why the questions raised by Mark’s case matter beyond a single proceeding.
Organizations interested in coordinating with Clutch Justice or contributing relevant documentation can contact hello@clutchjustice.com. Identify the practice you documented, the records supporting it, and how it bears on the issues presented in Foley’s application. Please omit private personal information from an initial inquiry.
Before preparing a submission, confirm the Supreme Court docket, applicable filing requirements, and current deadline with the Court or your organization’s counsel. The application copy reviewed here lists the Supreme Court case number as pending; use the Court’s assigned number when filing.
Correct the Problem. Stop Making the Complainant the Problem.
Mark’s case deserves attention because of what he says happened when he tried to be heard. The allegations involve the use of judicial authority, access to the courts, and incarceration. The concerns about medical care add another reason to examine the consequences closely.
Accountability would mean reviewing the service records, the restrictions on filings and communications, the basis for the jail sentence, and the response to requests for care. It would also mean explaining what changed after the SCAO complaints, the formal notices, and the MDOC mail-log production—and showing how the county now checks that orders reach the people expected to respond to them. It would mean answering the substance of the complaints and correcting whatever that examination establishes was wrong.
A county that cannot get basic access to its courts right has zero business building a bigger jail. Before Barry County asks the public to fund more capacity to incarcerate people, it should demonstrate that it can reliably deliver court orders, give people a meaningful opportunity to be heard, and provide adequate medical care to those it already holds. More jail beds do not correct any of those failures. They expand the reach of a system whose existing failures remain unanswered.
Barry County does not have to welcome criticism to answer it. It does have to be willing to examine the conduct being criticized.
I am keeping this record because a person’s persistence should not become an excuse to stop looking at what they are reporting. The question is what happened to Mark, why it happened, and whether anyone with the authority to correct it will act.
Questions this case raises
What does Mark Foley allege?
His Supreme Court application alleges failures to serve orders, restrictions on filings and communications, and a 30-day jail sentence imposed after he challenged service failures. These are allegations in his application, not findings by the Supreme Court.
Does the application document a denial of medical care in jail?
No. Clutch Justice’s August 27 reporting attributes the medical-care account to Foley and reports hospitalization with sepsis after release. That article said records had been requested for independent confirmation.
Why does the article discuss court mail?
Foley alleges that misdirected mail and communication restrictions impeded his ability to challenge orders. Separate Clutch Justice reporting describes a late prosecutorial filing, an unreceived denial order, and repeated notice to oversight and risk-management recipients. The thirty-page MDOC production was largely policy; its single page of mail receipts documented a church newsletter, not Barry County correspondence. Together, these raise questions about reliable court access and the response to reported failures.
What relief is Foley requesting?
He seeks Supreme Court review, emergency relief ahead of a September 16, 2026 hearing, access to orders and transcripts, and independent judicial review. The application does not establish that relief has been granted.
Source notes
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