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Wilcox Before the Court

Personally, I don’t have a problem with this. 

The state Supreme Court will soon decide a case worth nearly $40,000 to a company partly owned by a former justice who served with five of the current justices.

Heritage Farms - a company owned by former Justice Jon Wilcox and his family - is one of 19 plaintiffs that sued over a 2003 forest fire that decimated 572 acres. At issue is how much in damages is owed.

An expert on judicial ethics said justices should search their consciences to determine whether they can stay on the case. All have remained on the case without explaining their decision.

One of 19 plaintiffs… relatively small dollar amount at stake… whatever.  Rule on the case.

Posted by Owen at 0016 hrs
Law

1. I agree. We have gone way overboard on conflict of interest concerns. If a judge really has no contacts with anyone, he is probably a lousy judge.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 22, 2009 at 1443 hrs
   
   
   

2. The amount at issue or number of plaintiffs should not matter. What should matter is whether other justice will be able to fairly and impartially decide the case.  In this case, they believe that they can as none has recused. 

   Also, I don’t think we have gone overboard with conflicts of interest.  But the problem arises is when potential conflicts are not disclosed.  For that reason, you will commonly see judges go out of their way to announce the potential conflicts because then it is up to the parties to move for substitution. If they don’t, they waive the potential conflict as grounds for an appeal.

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on January 24, 2009 at 1046 hrs
   
   
   

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