Friday, May 8, 2026
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Ninth Circuit Affirms Dismissal of ‘Fantastical’ Lawsuit
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday affirmed the dismissal with prejudice of an action against President George H.W. Bush, who died in 2018, the British intelligence agency MI5, and others, on the ground that the complaint is grounded in fantasy.
The pleading by a Rebecca L. Bradshaw, on behalf of herself and her mother, Patricia A. Ralph, alleges, among other things, that Bush, while head of the CIA (from Jan. 30, 1976, to Jan. 20, 1977), “made an instrumental decision with United Kingdom counter-torture and DNA warfare in England to involve their own violent racist torturers with following Rebecca as a small child for the purpose of inciting violence.” She alleges that surveillance of her continues.
In torpedoing the action on June 25, 2025, District Court Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California wrote:
“The Court has reviewed the complaint and concludes that it does not demonstrate a basis for federal subject matter jurisdiction….[T]he allegations of the complaint are fictitious and legally frivolous. Plaintiffs allege a decades-long campaign of ‘remote torture’ conducted by a foreign government and orchestrated by former President George H.W. Bush when he was at the CIA. The allegations are ‘sufficiently fantastical to defy reality as we know it[,]’ and thus the Court need not take the allegations as true.”
The Ninth Circuit, in a memorandum opinion signed by Circuit Judges Roopali H. Desai, Anthony S. Johnstone, and Kenneth Kiyul Lee, said yesterday:
“The district court properly dismissed Bradshaw and Ralph’s action because Bradshaw and Ralph’s claims were ‘wholly insubstantial and frivolous’ and thus failed to confer federal subject matter jurisdiction.”
The case is Bradshaw v. MI5, 25-4397.
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