Judge or no judge?

Judicial election campaigns don’t have to be boring. Ongoing case in point: the reelection campaign of Dallas, Texas, County Judge Amber Givens and her odd dispute with the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.

They’re fighting over whether that was really the judge presiding over a Zoom hearing in which both the defendant’s attorneys and his prosecutors had already agreed on a bail bond reduction. This was not a high-stakes proceeding. It seems as if there wasn’t much need to have a proceeding at all (except probably to satisfy some rule).

Who cares?

I will now stipulate that I know nothing about Dallas politics. I do know a little bit about judicial elections and that little bit is that almost no one pays attention to them or much cares. I’m guessing that lack of caring should extend to whether or not a judge delegated a Zoom hearing that had only one possible outcome to an underling.

Yet what happened is that the Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association filed a complaint against the judge with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

You’d think defense lawyers wouldn’t want to get on a judge’s bad side. On other hand, you’d also think a trial judge shouldn’t sue a bunch of defense lawyers.

That seems to be about to happen too.

Judge Givens, represented by no less than four lawyers at major national law firm Sidley & Austin, last week filed a 23-page petition (along with 98 pages of exhibits) in Dallas County District Court asking to be allowed to take the depositions of three lawyers and “a corporate representative” of the association in preparation for a potential defamation suit. The petition claims that false reports were made to local media “to sway voters to vote against Judge Givens” in an upcoming primary election.

I have so many questions.

First off, are the judge’s fellow Dallas judges going to be able to preside over this? Imagine the uncomfortable scene in the judges’ lounge. (Yeah, I know there probably isn’t a judges’ lounge, but this would make for a better sitcom if there was one.)

Can a local trial judge afford Sidley & Austin?

Should Sidley & Austin be recommending expensive litigation that will draw news coverage shortly before an election, or should it have recommended ignoring the whole thing?

And then there’s this line from the judge’s petition: “Even in politics there are lines that may not be crossed — committing defamation is one of them.”

Really? It seems like defamation is what politics is mostly about.

I don’t have answers to these questions.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, the problem with the Zoom hearing was that no one could see the judge. The judge said she was having technical problems with Zoom but she was there. The complaining lawyers claim the voice they heard was not the judge’s.

This is the sort of thing Zoom litigation has wrought. At least no one looked like a cat.

There’s got to be a game show based on this — "Judge or No Judge: You Be the Judge."

I insist on a “created by” credit.

Defamation by implication? In other judge-related defamation news, a lawsuit was filed last week in Pima County, Arizona, on behalf of a justice of the peace’s daughter, who also happens to be a former prosecutor, against the Arizona Daily Star for reporting that she left her job.

Is that libelous?

Well, maybe. After all, timing is everything. The plaintiff, Caitlin Watters, resigned shortly after her dad, Adam Watters, fired a “warning shot” at a stalker. Caitlin was on the scene, hiding behind a bush with a shotgun and her sister.

And you thought being a justice of the peace was boring.

Dad got briefly suspended. The stalker got convicted and sentenced last week to a year and a half in prison. Caitlin got a new job with a law firm, and she says she resigned her prosecution job because she wanted the new job. Her lawsuit says no one at the newspaper asked her why she resigned.

Your basic journalistic laziness.

The lawsuit, however, describes the alleged error differently: “This is a defamation, libel and slander action against the Arizona Daily Star and reporters Carol Ann Alaimo and Timothy Steller who, motivated by animus, bias and a political anti-gun, anti-Republican, and anti-Conservative agenda, deliberately, willfully and maliciously published defamatory statements….”

Apparently everything is about politics.

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