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because “[a]ll of the pertinent facts which the petitioner wishes
to include at trial are already stated within the stipulation of
facts as it is presently constituted.” This argument might be
persuasive if the stipulations were the product of real
negotiation, but as far as we can tell, the Commissioner’s
counsel wrote the stipulations himself and included Lovenguth’s
arguments by guessing what he would testify to at trial. Having
the opposing party decide what factors are pertinent is not the
voluntary exchange we had in mind in Branerton. This is
especially true given that Lovenguth’s new counsel has identified
new issues that were omitted from the stipulation.
We think, though, that the decisive factor here is that
Lovenguth did not understand the stipulation process itself. We
do agree that he understood that he faced a deadline to enter the
stipulation of facts--Commissioner’s counsel called him more than
a dozen times in two weeks to remind him. But Lovenguth learned
only two days before the deadline that the person calling him was
not his friend, but someone who was going to “eat [him] up in
court.” Lovenguth responded to this pressure, and his fears, by
signing the stipulation that he thought the Commissioner’s
counsel was assisting him with. We also acknowledge that, on a
human level, Commissioner’s counsel was faced with a pro se
litigant who was “confrontational and belligerent”--reasonably
leading him to think that writing the stipulations himself was
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