When a federal court is considering your case, and the court clerk asks you for a relevant document, don't respond that the clerk should file a Freedom of Information Act request. Here's an excerpt from yet another Judge Posner opinion slamming the federal government's immigration bureaucracy:

The lawyer [for the asylum seeker] filed a written brief, but because he failed to attach the required certificate (see 8 C.F.R. § 1003.3(c)(1)) stating that he had served the brief on the Department of Homeland Security, the Board refused to consider it. (The record is silent on whether he served the department. The brief is not in the record, and when the Clerk of our court asked the Board for a copy of it he was told that he would have to file a request for it under the Freedom of Information Act!) The Board, or rather a single member authorized to act for the Board, went on to affirm the immigration judge’s decision without opinion.

Bad litigation tactics on the government's part, it seems to me. (Note that Judge Posner does not use exclamation points often.) The rest of the opinion has more substantive criticisms of the government's actions, including the immigration service's use of what the opinion calls "junk science."

UPDATE: Whoops -- forgot to include a link to the opinion; just corrected it. Thanks to How Appealing for the link, and to commenter Edward A. Hoffman for the reminder.