ONE OF THE WORST EXPERIENCES YOU CAN HAVE

One of the worst experiences you can have is to be reminded unexpectedly of a personal tragedy. This just happened to me.

I opened a file draw and inadvertently pulled out a “Congratulations” letter from the clerk of a Federal District Court in Louisiana, welcoming me, as a new officer of the court. 


I remember the sense of elation and anticipation I felt when I first received this item, years ago.

That was before I discovered that the Canons of Judicial Ethics mean nothing, and the Judicial Complaint Rules mean less than nothing.

I no longer have a law license. 

My three licenses were suspended after I filed a confidential complaint of misconduct against a federal district judge, who publicized my name as the lawyer, who had filed a confidential complaint of misconduct against him. 

This maneuver by the judge of course destroyed my effectiveness in either litigating or settling the matter at hand.

More than two years later, I was prosecuted by the Louisiana Disciplinary Counsel for having brought the confidential complaint against the federal judge. 

I was prosecuted successfully, of course; both of the lawyers on the three-person committee who adjudicated the complaint against me, were members of the lawyer organization who had gifted the judge. (This was one of several of my complaints about this judge – that he took gifts and did favors for his lawyer pals.)

The lawyers who found me guilty of misconduct of course knew what I should have known:

If you expect a judicial complaint to be taken seriously, you live in a world of illusion and delusion.

The attorneys who found me to be unethical for complaining about an unethical judge, practice before the very judge about whom I had complained. They knew there was no actual issue to be decided when it came to either punishing an officer of the federal courts for fling a truthful complaint about a judge versus stating, candidly and honestly, that the judge had done what I said he had done. 

I discovered, at the cost of my law licenses, in three states (Louisiana, Hawaii, Maryland), that no one associated with the legal system is going to criticize a federal district judge for flouting the judicial complaint rules. Why not? Those rules are not enforced by the Circuit Judges who are theoretically supposed to supervise the conduct of the judges below. The Circuit Judges set the tone and it is a very low tone. Inaudible. 

I was reminded of all this when I opened that file and found my “congratulations” letter together with my certificate of admission. I won’t be needing these items any more and don’t need to be surprised by them again. I put them in another file – a round one.