6 days ago
Sticky situations when judges lose their cool over decorum breaches
June 23 (Reuters) - Federal judges routinely deal with some of the worst human behavior, presiding over cases that might include murder, bank robbery, kidnapping and all manner of shady business dealings.
Then there's the conduct that U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II in Pensacola, Florida, called 'absolutely disgusting' — something that after 23 years on the bench, he said he 'never dreamed' he would have to address.
Someone stuck gum under the counsel's table in his courtroom.
Wetherell's order, opens new tab earlier this month taking the gum-sticking plaintiff to task strikes me as an instant classic in the long and cantankerous genre of judges castigating lawyers and litigants for breaches of decorum over attire, ringing cell phones, font choice and more.
For example, this spring U.S. Magistrate Judge Ray Kent in the Western District of Michigan struck a filing, opens new tab by an attorney from a firm called Dragon Lawyers because each page of the complaint included a cartoon logo of a dragon wearing a suit. The logo is 'juvenile and impertinent,' Kent wrote. 'The Court is not a cartoon.'
Or remember when now-FBI director Kash Patel, then a lawyer in the U.S. Justice Department's counterterrorism section, was raked over the coals in 2016 by Houston-based U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes for failing to wear a suit and tie in court?
'If you want to be a lawyer, dress like a lawyer,' Hughes said, according to a transcript, opens new tab of the hearing, unmollified by Patel's explanation that he'd come straight from Tajikistan, where he was on a work trip, and hadn't packed a suit.
An FBI spokesperson did not respond to my request to reach Patel for comment, and Hughes — who went on to kick Patel out of his courtroom — has since assumed inactive senior status.
As for judges getting peeved when cell phones ring in court, stories abound, though it's hard to top an incident in 2005. Then-judge Robert Restaino in Niagara Falls City Court in New York revoked the release of 46 defendants appearing for their weekly check-ins as part of a domestic violence program after no one took responsibility for a cell phone trilling in the courtroom, the State of New York Commission on Judicial Conduct found, opens new tab. Restaino, who is now mayor of Niagara Falls, did not respond to a request for comment.
By comparison, Wetherell was a model of restraint in dealing with the plaintiff, a former lottery winner enmeshed in a battle over her late husband's estate, who confessed to affixing the wad. Wetherell issued an admonishment but no sanctions — though he made it clear he wouldn't be so forgiving in the future.
If 'anything like this happens again,' he wrote, he would come up with a punishment 'commensurate with the schoolchild-nature of the violation — maybe sitting in the courtroom under the supervision of a court security officer handwriting 'I will not stick my gum under a courtroom table again' 100 times on notebook paper.''
Wetherell declined comment via a spokesperson from his chambers.
The errant gum was discovered when a federal prosecutor got some stuck on her skirt after brushing against the underside of the table, Wetherell wrote.
Additional gum, 'still fresh and stringy' remained hanging, the judge said. (A post-incident photo documenting the stretched-out gum can be found at docket entry 51, opens new tab.)
Given the gum's elasticity, Wetherell surmised it had been placed there during the morning hearing, a seemingly routine evidentiary proceeding.
Plaintiff Lorraine Padavan, together with her now-deceased husband, won $96 million in 2021 in the New York State lottery. The pair separated but remained married until his death. She's now challenging changes to his estate plan that benefit another woman.
Padavan's lawyer, John Adams of GrayRobinson in Pensacola, did not respond to a request for comment on behalf of himself or his client.
In a letter to the court, opens new tab, Padavan apologized to the assistant U.S. attorney and offered to pay for her dry cleaning or buy her a new skirt, as well as compensate the court for any damage to the table.
