Louisiana Voice

The wheels of justice are prone to turn slowly. Anyone who has ever had to deal with the courts can pretty much verify that. Even routine litigation can take up to a decade—or longer—for resolution.

So, when The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeal denied a motion by Mangham contractor Jeff Mercer to recuse Chief Judge Henry Brown at 10:23 a.m. on August 3, 2017, it was more than a little surprising when Judge Pro Tempore Joe Bleich of Ruston was able to whip out a three-page supporting opinion—drafted, neatly typed and filed by the clerk—two minutes later, at 10:25 a.m.

In fact, Mercer’s attorney, David P. Doughty of Rayville, is of the opinion that it’s simply impossible and that “[t]he logical explanation is that this supporting opinion was drafted prior to the hearing ever occurring,” which might indicate to those familiar with the machinations of the courts to conclude that someone within the 2^nd Circuit was not quite playing by the rules.

By examining the timeline included in the link at the bottom of this story, one can see in the sixth and seventh entries that the order to deny the motion was issued at 10:23 a.m. on August 3 and Bleich’s supporting opinion filed by the clerk at 10:25 a.m. that same day.

One can also see how the principals involved probably thought Mercer would never be privy to the internal records of the court which revealed the expeditious manner in which Bleich’s supporting opinion was generated.

But they obviously underestimated the Mangham contractor who has already been forced out of business by DOTD and the 2^nd Circuit and by this time, had nothing to lose by pursuing a string of public records requests which led to revelations of skullduggery on the part of Brown and his law clerk, Trina Chu.

Both Brown and Chu would be gone in little more than a year.

A little background may be in order for Bleich. His BIOGRAPHY, as provided by the Louisiana Supreme Court, notes that he was assigned in January 2016 by order of the supreme court as judge pro tempore of the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeal to fill a vacancy created by a retirement. He was scheduled to serve from January 14 through April 30, 2016 or until the vacancy is filled, which occurred first. But in August 2017, of course, he was still serving.

Bleich received his undergraduate degree from Louisiana Tech University and his law degree from LSU Law School and served as a district court judge for the Third Judicial District Court (Lincoln and Union parishes) from 1982 to 1996 when he was elected Associate Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court to fill an unexpired term. He “retired” later that same year when he lost his bid for election to a full term and has practiced law in Ruston and served as a pro tempore judge in various district courts.

Bleich wrote a flowery three-page supporting opinion complete with legal “research,” peppering it with effusive praise for Judge Brown, finding “not a scintilla of bias by Judge Brown.”

Most observers would agree that that’s a lot of legal research and writing to cram into two minutes.

The only problem with that, besides, of course, the dubious speed with Bleich supposedly penned his gushing respect and admiration for Brown in his supporting opinion, was that it might have been a bit premature.

Little more than a year later, Brown would be gone from the bench, forced to resign after being SUSPENDED for his alleged behavior toward colleagues who were considering an appeal involving a close female friend of Brown’s.

He received an order from the Supreme Court to vacate the appeal court building in downtown Shreveport and to not take any judicial actions after complaints were filed that he had created a hostile environment toward colleagues who were hearing the appeal of a civil lawsuit against his friend who had been found liable for more than a million dollars in her own case which was also on appeal before the 2^nd Circuit.

But the story, particularly as it relates to Mercer, goes much deeper and involves several officials in the 2^nd Circuit and the possible illegal access of court files, including those in the Mercer case.

Mercer was a contractor on highway construction projects in Ouachita, Morehouse, Bossier, LaSalle and Caddo parishes—projects totaling nearly $9 million. He filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) in which he claimed DOTD inspectors attempted to shake him down for kickbacks and equipment or risk not having his work pass inspection.

When his payment for his work was subsequently withheld, he sued and a 12-person jury in 4^th Judicial District Court in Monroe unanimously AWARDED him $20 million on December 4, 2015. The official judgment was rendered on February 10, 2016.

DOTD appealed the decision to the 2^nd Circuit and Chief Judge Henry Brown, along with Judges Jeff Cox and Jeanette Garrett composed the three-judge panel which heard oral arguments. Brown sat on the panel despite the fact that his father had worked for 44 years as a civil engineer for DOTD, a fact he neglected to disclose.

Brown even wrote the opinion of the 2^nd Circuit panel which reversed the unanimous state district court verdict. That decision was filed on June 7, 2017. It was only after that decision that Mercer subsequently learned of Judge Brown’s failure to disclose his father’s employment with DOTD. He filed an Application for Rehearing and a Motion to Recuse and Vacate the Panel’s opinion.

It was that motion to recuse on which the August 3 order was issued at 10:23 a.m., followed by Bleich’s opinion of more than three pages was researched, drafted, typed and filed by the clerk within the next two minutes.

A year later, on August 22, 2018, Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Detective Doug Smith was told by 2^nd Circuit Judicial Administrator Lillian Richie that she and other court employees had become aware that Trina Chu, Judge Brown’s clerk, “may have intentionally exceeded her authorization” while handling court documents on the court’s computer network.

Smith subsequently wrote a six-page report that reads more like a Trumpian chapter from the ongoing Ukraine investigation than routine court business with reports of unauthorized photocopies, access to restricted computer files, copying of confidential files onto a USB drive, and a string of emails that indicated ex parte communications (communications with respect to or in the interests of one side only or of an interested outside party to the exclusion of attorneys for the opposing parties) with Judge Brown’s friend Hahn Williams, the subject of the appeals case that ultimately got Brown removed from the bench.

One of those emails instructed Williams on how to transmit a document to her attorney so that it could not be traced back to her: “you can send the document to him (attorney) as is because it has no information that can be traced back to me on the document. Save it to a jump drive and give it to him so he won’t have to type much.”

Nor were the ex parte communications limited to Chu, Mercer claims, but also included Judge Brown receiving an email and documentation regarding his friend’s case. “The documents emailed to Judge Henry Brown were the confidential Second Circuit documents related to the Succession of Houston case…and actually sent to his Second Circuit email address,” Mercer says in his latest Petition to Annul (the 2^nd Circuit Court) Judgment.

According to the 2^nd Circuit panel’s decision, all three judges conducted a de novo review of the Mercer case on appeal. De novo appeal is an appeal in which the appellate court uses the trial court’s record but reviews evidence and law without yielding to the lower court’s ruling—as if the trial was being heard anew.

In Mercer’s case, there were nine volumes of exhibits comprising nearly 8,700 pages of required reading by each judge in a de novo review of the record.

“[t]he 2^nd Circuit sign sheet for the record and exhibits, however, reveals that the panel, in making the de novo review, must have relied solely on Judge Brown’s review of the record,” Mercer claims in his petition to annul. “Judge Cox never checked out either the original or duplicate record or exhibits, and after the April 4, 2017, oral arguments, Judge Garrett never checked out the duplicate record. Therefore, it was impossible for the entire panel to have made a de novo review of all the trial testimony and exhibits that were seen and heard by the (district court) jury for almost a month,” Mercer says.

“Thus, the Second Circuit’s own records show that a full de novo review of the trial records/exhibits by all three (3) judges never occurred after the case was submitted after the April 4, 2017 oral arguments (emphasis Mercer’s). In essence, one judge (Brown) substituted his opinion for twelve unanimous jurors. Judge Brown wrote a fifty (50) page opinion for the panel, thirty-eight (38) pages of which was discussion of an alleged de novo review fact finding by the entire panel, which never occurred after the case had been submitted.”

The petition says that because of the ill practices of the court, “the June 7, 2017 decision of the Second Circuit Court of Appeal should be declared null and void, and the original unanimous jury verdict and judgment of February 10, 2016, should be reinstated and the Second Circuit [Court] of Appeal should be recused from any further hearing of this case.”

Mercer has also subpoenaed Lillian Ritchie for her deposition as well as digital copies of all documents obtained through forensic imaging that were copied from Chu’s computer as they relate to his case and all email messages of Jennifer Brown, Judge Brown’s former permanent supervising law clerk (and now general counsel for the 2^nd Circuit) from August 26, 2016 through August 30, 2017.

If nothing else, Mercer has peeled back the layers of secrecy, for lack of a better description, that shroud the court’s procedures from the general public—procedures that citizens have the right to know about when they have business before the court.

We live in what is generally considered an open society and as such, we should know what our elected officials—including judges—do and how they do it. Secrecy should have no place here.

Mercer may have opened a tiny portal to how the system works and how more transparency should be the order of the day.

The fair administration of justice demands it.

To review the entire Mercer petition and the eye-opening exhibits, go HERE.