So Long, Pat!Gold Watch Time - September 12th marks both the thirty-third anniversary of Jury Room Chief Pat LaVigne's hiring by the Clerk's Office, and her well earned retirement. Make sure to stop by the Jury Room Thursday to say goodbye, and to wish new boss Cathy Bernstein congratulations. It's a safe bet the transition will be as seamless as the uninterrupted, never ending stream of jurors provided by Pat and team for the grist mill known as justice in Broward County. It's certainly no walk in the park dealing with the general public on a mass scale, or judges with their robes in a twist, but Pat made it look easy all these years. Well done!
Also outta here ... - the Florida Bar's Director of Lawyer Regulation is calling it quits too. That's right, JAABLOG's numero uno nemesis Ken Marvin is retiring, effective January 2014. Bar sources confirmed today that Marvin has given "verbal notice", and that the job opening has been posted internally "per policy". If no insider applicant makes the grade for a job that currently pays Marvin $119,140 a year, the position will be posted externally ...
And more Bar news - Bar v. Blog was scheduled to go before a Grievance Committee (GC) today. We weren't invited, although we pretty much begged the Bar for an invitation in our last written response, so as to tell everybody what we think they really should know. Did the GC find probable cause? Did they summarily dump the complaints? Or did they assign a lawyer investigator to finally gather the real story? You'll know as soon as we do ...
It's a small town, after all ... - once upon a time, there were all kinds of rumors as to whether or not Ilona Holmes would testify on behalf of one time gal pal Gardiner during the disgraced former judge's Bar trial. Ultimately, of course, Holmes was a conspicuous no show. And now we've stumbled onto this Sworn Motion To Disqualify and the Order Granting Disqualification from last summer on an open homicide case*, which shows just how concerned Holmes was that she might be subpoenaed to appear. Apparently, the judge consulted Fred Haddad to intervene if a subpoena was issued, despite the fact Haddad had at least one serious case pending before her. One thing led to another, resulting in the disqualification order, wherein Holmes couldn't resist deeming the granted Motion "frivolous". A returned call by Holmes' JA concerning some of the issues presented left us more baffled than before, so be sure to read the Motion and Order for yourself, or post a comment if you have the backstory. Just another bit of interesting fallout from the Gardiner mess, with more surely to come ...
*The homicide case involvedboth Haddad and David Bogenschutz, the lawyer who would have been calling Holmes as a witness on behalf of Gardiner. Got that?
Coming Soon - From the Pen of Howard Finkelstein; SAO making good headlines (for a change); A whole ton of reversals ...