A federal judge threw out a lawsuit by a county resident and tax protester against County Clerk Mary Ann Collins on Wednesday.

Chief U.S. District Judge William Downes ruled that the federal government did not have the jurisdiction to deal with Harvey Bruce Annis' lawsuit about the sale of his foreclosed Alcova property, that Collins was doing her job by filing notices of federal tax liens, and that Annis' request for a summary judgment - a declaration by the court that a case has no disputed facts - violated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Annis could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

This marked the latest installment of a long-running dispute between the federal government and the self-proclaimed "freeman" Annis, who in 1995 ran a legal notice proclaiming sovereignty under an undefined "One Supreme Court."

Since the early 1970s, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service filed multiple notices of federal tax liens amounting to more than $276,000, because Annis did not pay individual income taxes, according to the records in the Natrona County Clerk's office.

In 1991, the IRS seized the property and sold it at public auction to the U.S. government for $2,900. Annis had 180 days to redeem the property and did not, so the property was quitclaimed to the government, according to the quitclaim deed filed in the county clerk's office in October 1992.

The IRS owned the property until March 20, when it sold the property to Ross Lay of Hawaii for $43,003.

Annis sued on April 17, claiming Collins and Lay received the land by "fraudulent conveyance."

Annis claimed the notices of federal tax liens are prohibited by the Federal Tax Lien Act of 1966, and that he has a "land patent" that forbids its forced sale according to the Wyoming Constitution.

Collins, through her attorney P. Craig Silva, responded in an April motion to dismiss the case that she was doing her job to file the notices, that Annis brought these problems on himself, and that he drew some of his ideas from an Internet article partially titled, "Taxpayers Free to Ignore an IRS Summons."

In a subsequent document, Silva wrote that one of Annis' documents doesn't make sense nor addresses Collins' claims. "It is composed of gibberish."

On Wednesday, Silva and Collins said they were happy with Downes' dismissal with prejudice, meaning Annis cannot refile the case.

In his dismissal order, Downes also expressed his frustration with Annis and the documents he filed with the court.

Annis misspelled the judge's name in some documents, asked Downes to recuse himself from the case, did not serve Lay with the lawsuit, and claimed that Collins' responses were bogus because her name and Annis' name were capitalized in legal documents.

"Finally, this Court will not waste its time addressing Plaintiff's assertion that Defendant Collins has 'changed the lawful status of the Plaintiff and the Defendants' from actual parties to 'fictitious parties' by typing the parties' names in the caption of her pleadings in all capital letters," Downes wrote. "Such an assertion is absurd."

Reporter Tom Morton can be reached at (307) 266-0592, or at Tom.Morton@casperstartribune.net.