Posted on 08/22/2005 6:36:19 AM PDT by Mike Bates
The lawyers' approach might have been "weaselly" but it didn't break any laws, a federal appellate court has ruled.
Attorneys Edward Theobald, Anthony Pinelli and Alan Brunell asked federal Judge Charles Norgle to appoint them special assistant state's attorneys to represent three prison guards accused of beating to death Cook County Jail detainee Louis Schmude in 2000. Norgle refused.
So the three went to Cook County Circuit Court Judge Gay-Lloyd Lott and had him appoint them. When Norgle heard they got themselves appointed and charged taxpayers $380,000, he fined them each $5,000 and ordered them to give the $380,000 back.
But Norgle, a U.S. District Court judge, had no right to do that, the panel of three federal appellate judges said.
"We sympathize with the District Court on this point," Judge William J. Bauer wrote in an opinion handed down last week. "At oral argument, we asked attorney Theobald why he chose not to disclose to the state court the concerns that the district judge had raised about appointing him and his colleagues. Like the court below, we found his responses unpersuasive and his manner somewhat evasive."
Actually, what Judge Frank Easterbrook told Theobald at oral argument in May was, "The main concern in this case is that you were weaselly with the federal court and now you've been weaselly with us. ... It's now easy to see what Judge Norgle was worried about."
In his opinion issued Thursday, Bauer concluded, "Nonetheless, the attorneys were under no duty to notify the District Court of their appointments because the matter had no bearing on the merits of the federal litigation and concerned only them and the State of Illinois."
That means the attorneys will get their fines and fees back.
And more tax money goes out the window to someone who just knew how to 'game' the system...
Think their "services" were worth $380,000?
they must not need the work because now they will NEVER get another appointment.
If it weren't Cook County, that might be right. But there, anything is possible.
We just need to get rid of the whole judicial branch of government; they're all activists and they're ruining this country!
I wanna keep Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist and Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown and. . .
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