Louisiana Voice

Should a judge not involved in a civil case communicate with the presiding judge to make suggestions on how a ruling should be worded?

Should such action take on added significance if both judges are named defendants in a separate lawsuit if the plaintiff in their case is also the plaintiff in the first case?

Would such contact be considered ILLEGAL CASE-FIXING, i.e., ex parte communication?

If you’re confused by now, then welcome to the 4^th Judicial District Court, which serves the parishes of Ouachita and Morehouse where a general state of confusion appears to be the norm rather than the exception.

It all stems from the original racketeering lawsuit filed by Monroe businessman Stanley Palowsky III, et al against W. Brandon Cork, et al, in which Palowsky claimed that his company, AESI, was blacklisted in retaliation for his exposing an excess-billing scheme involving environmental remediation projects.

But when Palowsky discovered that Allyson Campbell, sister of a prominent Monroe personal injury attorney, a gossip columnist for the Monroe News Star newspaper, and an all-around gal about town who just happened to clerk for the judges of the 4^th JDC, had used as many as 52 separate writ applications filed by Palowsky as an end table in her office, he SUED CAMPBELL for concealing or destroying court documents.

He also sued the five judges of the 4^th JDC for conspiring to protect Campbell by covering up her alleged misdeeds. The five judicial defendants included His Honors Carl Sharp, Ben Jones, Wilson Rambo, Stephens Winters, and Fred Amman. Sharp and Amman have since retired from the bench.

Still confused? It gets better.

Thanks to the dogged determination of Ouachita Parish’s real newspaper, the Ouachita Citizen over in West Monroe, we now have a clearer picture of what is going on across the beautiful Ouachita River at the Duck Dynasty official publication.

The case-fixing allegations against Jones and Sharp were exposed in late 2020 after The Citizen got its hands on hundreds of internal court documents that included a draft judgment by Sharp in the original Cork matter that contained (gasp!) handwritten notes and edits in the margins from Jones. (Those records were obtained by The Citizen not without substantial effort that included overcoming an unsuccessful lawsuit filed by the judges against the paper in an effort to prevent turning over what were clearly public records.)

Of course, the judges claimed judicial immunity for their protection of Campbell and Ad Hoc Judge Jerome Barbera III in December 2015 dismissed the five judges as defendants based on an 1871 ruling that said, “It is a general principal of the highest importance to the proper administration of justice that a judicial officer (judge), in exercising the authority vested in him, shall be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself.”

In other words, QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, the blanket protection that shields prosecutors, judges and law enforcement officers from responsibility for their abuses of power.

Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal has been assigned the task of deciding whether the judges of the 4^th JDC may continue to cover for Jones’s suggested edits to Sharp.

It would appear from my admittedly layman’s perspective, that ex parte communication between two judges, one of whom is assigned to hear a case and another who most definitely is not, would not fall under the definition of the exercise of their authority. Ex parte, by definition, is prohibited communication:

ex parte

ĕks pär′tē

adjective

1. Of or relating to an action taken in a legal proceeding by one party without the presence or participation of the opposing party.
2. Of or relating to such an action taken in a manner that is not permitted due to the risk of undue influence or interference.

I trust this is sufficient to clear everything up.