Boatwright is Dry-Docked
June 30, 2015 § 10 Comments
The legal travails of Toulman and Grace Boatwright have been chronicled here before.
To bring you up to date, this is the case in which: (1) a chancellor recused before ruling on a R59 motion; (2) the remaining chancellor refused to rule on the motion; (3) there was an appeal; (4) the COA reversed on the basis that the second chancellor should have ruled on the motion; (5) on remand the second chancellor recused, and a special chancellor took up the case and ruled on the R59 motion; (6) Toulman appealed again; (7) five (yes, 5) judges of the COA recused (if you’re counting, that’s seven recusals in this saga); and (8) the COA affirmed in Boatwright v. Boatwright, handed down June 23, 2015.
It seems a shame to draw the curtain closed on this epic, which arose in 2004, more than eleven years ago. (Of course, if cert is granted …)
Judges Carlton, Lee, and Irving would have granted a new trial, which would have kept this case going for perhaps an additional eleven years (optimistically speaking).
In case you’re trying to diagram this: McGehee wrote the prevailing opinion, in which Griffis, and Ishee joined; Carlton, Lee, and Irving dissented. Barnes, Roberts, Maxwell, Fair, and James did not participate. A 3-3 tie is an affirmance.
On the serious side, both the majority opinion, written by Special Judge McGehee, and the dissent, penned by Judge Carlton, address some weighty issues of judicial ethics arising out of the social relationships between attorneys and judges. This particular case came to grief when the chancellor accepted an invitation to go turkey hunting with one of the lawyers involved in the Boatwright litigation while the case was pending. Both opinions discuss the ethical considerations involved and their ramifications.
As with many ethical questions, there are not only murky areas, but different people in good faith can see things differently and draw different conclusions, as was the case here.
What is sometimes difficult to see is where to draw the line. In the Guardianship of McClinton case decided only last February by the COA, the court brushed aside attorney Michael Brown’s argument that the judge had an improper social relationship with another attorney in the case because the judge frequently had lunch with that attorney and they attended college football games together. For those of us here on the ground, it can be hard to draw distinctions so as to arrive at a firm idea of appropriate conduct.
The main thing is for us all to take to heart the serious ethical implications involved in the social interactions between lawyers and judges, and to be sensitive to them. It’s absolutely true that litigants, their families and friends, and passers-by are watching everything we do and drawing their own conclusions.
JUDGE LACKEY RETIRES
October 5, 2010 § Leave a comment
This from Tom Freeland’s NMissCommentor Blog …
Judge Lackey Retirement Dinner, & request for donations
A retirement party for Hon. Henry Lackey, Circuit Judge of the Third Circuit Court District is being held by the Third Circuit Bar in Oxford on November 4th at the Oxford Conference Center. I’m one of the lawyers collecting contributions toward this dinner, which will also include a retirement gift to Judge Lackey.
Please send any contributions you are willing to make with the check made out to:
Judge Lackey Retirement Party Fund
Send them to me at:
Box 269
Oxford, MS 38655If you send a check, it would be useful to my effort to keep track of donations if you sent me an email telling me you did and how much it was. Send the email to tom (at) freelandlawfirm.com
Invitations to this event will be sent out later this month to members of the Third Circuit Bar and to judges all over the state; if you wish to attend the event and aren’t in the counties of the Third Circuit, send me an email to the address just mentioned and I will see that the information gets to the appropriate person.
Thanks!
[Tom Freeland]
I don’t know how many Twelfth District lawyers have had the privilege to know or practice before Judge Lackey. If you do know him or tried cases in his court, you may want to try to make the event or send a contribution.
I met Judge Lackey back in the 1980’s at a CLE program in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. I had recently finished trying a case before Chancellor Woodrow Brand, sitting as Special Chancellor in Meridian in a trial involving lots of money and a world-renowned manufacturer. At the conclusion of the trial Judge Brand complimented the attorneys on a job well done and took the case under advisement. When he heard that, Judge Lackey raised his bushy eyebrows and remarked with humor and some irony that that sort of compliment was something that lawyers in Judge Brand’s district were simply not accustomed to. We laughed together and swapped tales about practice in our different parts of the state. He knew some Meridian lawyers and judges and asked about them. He was kind, soft-spoken, attentive and humorous, and I enjoyed the little time I spent with him — so much so that I remembered it down through the years.
I ran into Judge Lackey last year at a Judges’ meeting in Tunica, and he remembered the New Orleans seminar and was kind enough to say that he did remember sitting next to me and visiting. He reminded me that there had been an ice storm that Sunday that closed the bridges out of the city so that he and his wife were stranded there an extra day. I had forgotten that. My wife and I had made it out of the city an hour before the bridges were closed.
If Judge Lackey’s long service as a lawyer and as a Circuit Judge were all he accomplished in his career, he would be remembered as a successful public servant. His role in the Scruggs scandal, however, in which he hewed strictly to judicial and legal ethics, and would not deviate an inch from the proper path, elevates him to a higher level of esteem. Not because he did what professional standards required of him, but because of his courage in facing down the beast and bringing it to destruction.
Judge Lackey is a beacon of right shining through the ashy pall that Scruggs and his minions cast over the legal profession and the judiciary. For that let us ever remember him and esteem his memory.
God bless you in your retirement, Judge Lackey.
The Better Chancery Practice Blog 