Last month Oscar Hotusing, an attorney in Brevard County, Florida—who this week ran for judge in the 18th Judicial Circuit Court—had a civil suit filed against him for abusing the legal process.
According to the Initial Complaint (2020-CA-007528-O : Probst, Andrew vs. Hotusing, Oscar, et al.), Oscar Hotusing, an attorney with nearly 30 years of experience, committed “blatant misinterpretation of the law” in a family court custody case, excluding the child victim’s testimony, along with police reports, counselor’s reports, and any parts of the DCF reports that contained statements from the child victim.
In addition, Oscar Hotusing intentionally misrepresented the Florida Guardianship statute quoting only the last sentence in the Florida Statute 744.301(1), “The mother of a child born out of wedlock is the natural guardian of the child” while ignoring the first sentence of the same statute that stated that, “The parents jointly are the natural Guardians of their own children” as well as the Supreme Court of Florida mandatory case law that clearly interpret in State v Earl, 649 So. 2d 297 (1995) that when the “unwed father demonstrates and carries out the requisite settled purpose to be a father he comes within the first sentence of the statute.”
This was done during an Emergency Pick-up Order filed by Mr. Probst after the Mother had refused to return the minor child after the scheduled every-other-weekend visitations. Based on Mr. Hotusing’s advice, this caused the minor child to miss 8 days of school. The court temporarily awarded custody to the mother based on this intentional fraudulent representation of the law. Mr. Hotusing used this intentional misstatement of the law to temporarily transfer majority custody to the mother despite the father having legal custody for the previous 6 years.
Meanwhile, the mother of the minor child had been investigated by DCF, had been previously placed on a safety plan with DCF, and was receiving ongoing services from Brevard Cares with the minor child referred to ongoing counseling by DCF from only her every other weekend visitation. The custody was supposed to have been only Temporary until the Temporary hearing could be heard by the court the next month.
Instead of the hearing occurring the next month, Oscar Hotusing filed a motion to transfer venue that was heard on top of Mr. Propst’s motion for Temporary custody.
The court approved the transfer of venue to Brevard County with instructions on how to transfer the case. Instead of properly transferring the case Mr. Hotusing embarked upon a crusade of deception to the courts whereby both himself and his client committed fraud upon the court to hide the case between the courts. In an effort to delay the appointment of a Guardian Ad Litem and the Temporary Custody of the child based on a Best Interests of the Child Standard, Mr. Hotusing has managed through fraud and manipulation of the court system to delay these proceedings for over 9 months.
He is accused of having dismissed back child support owed to the plaintiff and manipulating procedures in order to deny the plaintiff due process. According to the Complaint, in using the accusation of fraud, Attorney Hotusing has even delayed the Plaintiff’s admittance to the Florida Bar, which he was very close to achieving, and was forced to attend an investigative hearing shortly after false allegations ironically of fraud upon the court by Oscar Hotusing against Mr. Propst which were determined by the Court to be unfounded.
Amazingly Oscar Hotusing is running for judge in the 18th Judicial Circuit on a platform based upon streamlining the family courts so that cases are not delayed because it is unjust to the parties involved.
Attorney Hotusing lost the election resoundinly. We look forward to seeing how this case unfolds over the coming weeks.
