Posted on 08/26/2004 10:13:53 AM PDT by Willie Green
A federal appeals has tossed out a ruling issued last year by U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab of Pittsburgh after ruling that the judge had copied his opinion, nearly word-for-word, from a memorandum written by one of the attorneys in a case.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Schwab made only two substantive changes to the memo, other than minor changes for grammar and style, then signed it as his own opinion.
In doing so, the court said, Schwab failed to show that he put the necessary thought and jurisprudence into the ruling.
~~~SNIP~~~
Schwab was appointed to the bench by President Bush and took office in January of 2003. He had only eight months experience when he issued his ruling in the Bright case.
Schwab is perhaps best known as the judge who sentenced comedian Tommy Chong -- of Cheech and Chong fame -- to nine months in prison for conspiring to sell drug paraphernalia.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
So what? If the opinion was correct, who cares? Did the lawyer have it copyrighted, or something?
This seems kind of strange, I SERIOUSLY doubt these judges actually type these things out themselves. I imagine they have a staff of paralegals they dictate the wording to and they actually type them out. I wonder if this was simple a case of an overworked paralegal taking a "shortcut"?
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling on homosexual marriage read like a Lambda memo.
Zackly. If the lawyer's papers correctly state the facts and the applicable law, there's no problem with the Judge adopting it as his opinion (though it would have been preferable had he acknowledged this).
It is not unusual for a judge to rely in his opinion on case citations and sometimes on language provided by lawyers in the case. A lawyer submits this material in the hope that the judge will find it persuasive and see things his (and his client's) way. And, since it is the judge's job to decide the case and to explain in his opinion why he came out a particular way, it should surprise no one that the judge will tend to borrow more heavily from the winning side than from the losing side. All that said, however, taking one side's material verbatim and simply signing your name to it is bad form. Judges (to borrow a famous phrase) are not supposed to be potted plants.
I'm a lawyer. My guess is that the lawyer intended the judge to copy it, so I suspect its not a matter of him not acknowledging the contribution. What the appeals court was complaining about was that the appearance created by this, namely that the judge was just parrotting the opinions of the lawyer, and not giving independent thought to the matter. Every now and then you read a case like this. You'd think that every judge would have enough sense not to leave himself open to this attack, but I guess not.
It's a very common thing for judges to simply sign orders submitted by attorneys. It's not so common for judges to ask the attorney to write an opinion.
Hey, sounds like a good gig -- just hang out, have the attorneys write draft opinions, and sign your name to the one that sounds best.
Anybody know what party the judge is?
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