Struggle To Get Seat On Bench Back Still Alive
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Laura Watson’s struggle to regain her seat on Broward’s Circuit Court remains alive.
The U. S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wants to discuss Watson’s appeal of her removal from the bench earlier this year.
Sotomayor distributed the appeal this week to other justices for a conference in the future.
Sotomayor stepped in after the appeal was initially rejected by Justice Clarence Thomas.
Laura Watson during her 2012 campaign (courtesy of JAABblog.com)
Distributing the appeal for a conference does not mean the U. S. Supreme Court will formally hear her allegations. But it does keep the appeal active.
Watson was removed from office by the Florida Supreme Court earlier this year for misconduct while she was a private attorney.
The Florida Supremes found that Watson’s settlement negotiations in a civil lawsuit were conducted in an unethical manner because some of the lawyers were cut out of the final payment.
The events in question were in 2004. She was elected as a judge in November 2012.
Watson’s appeal claims that her removal violated the constitutional rights of voters and campaign contributors. She says in the appeal that voters knew about her “attorney’s fee dispute” during the campaign and elected her anyway. Now the Florida Supreme Court is attempting to overturn the voters’ decision in the election three years ago.
The appeal alleges:
“The issues regarding the Attorney’s Fees Dispute were thoroughly vetted during Judge Watson’s primary and general elections for circuit court. Civil litigation between the parties stemming from the Attorney’s Fees Dispute was completed in 2008, and thereafter the Attorney’s Fees Dispute was written about extensively in newspaper articles and political blogs. After Judge Watson’s hotly contested election campaign, she won the election…Florida’s voters, campaign contributors, judicial candidates, and Judge Watson will be irrevocably harmed and divested of their fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms” by her removal from office.
Her appeal is below:
September 24th, 2015 at 3:57 pm
She’s toast. The U. S. Supreme Court is not going to overturn the Florida Supreme Court’s governance of the legal profession over a Watson, who essentially cut others out of their rightful rewards in a case settlement.
September 24th, 2015 at 4:11 pm
Watson can represent whatever she wants that the voters knew about her past, but one thing for sure Julio Gonzalez and his consultant Judy Stern had the information and did nothing with it.
One has to feel sorry for Gonzalez, can there be anything more frustrating than watching the person you lost a close election too get removed from the bench on an issue you could have raised in the campaign and did not.
September 24th, 2015 at 6:04 pm
Anyone bother to read the court docs?
Lawyers who lied under oath?
WTF…
September 25th, 2015 at 10:12 am
Regain Seat On Bench
and today: “designed to train the nine members in to communicate better”
Buddy, You need an editor.
FROM BUDDY:
Oh, I definitely do need an editor. Thanks for pointing out the above typo, which has been fixed.
September 25th, 2015 at 12:08 pm
This case raises issues about legal process separate and apart from the merits and facts of this case upon which I know nothing and have no opinion.
1. Can someone be legally sanctioned for an act after eight years, if the act was in 2004 and the sanction in 2015 or 2014, and
2. Can anyone be sanctioned as a Judge or other officials thru a sanction of their post action career if unrelated t
o the action they are being sanctioned for
And of course the US Supreme Court HAPPILY trashes Florida Supreme Court Decisions.
Or does Las Olas Lawyer think Gore became President? real legal giants on Las Olas n Browsed Boulevard these days – no wonder they all have to money launder I.e. lobby to pay the rent.
September 26th, 2015 at 3:47 pm
Buddy;
I’ve long given up worrying about typos, grammaticals, and the such on my blog.
Last time I looked, not only is the content free, but very few donations have ever made it into the door. And the few that did were re-gifted to Women In Distress.
On the opposite of my free content is the thousands and thousands and thousands of hours I’ve put forward over the decade, with a handful of attaboys, a few letters from Bob Norman’s hack lawyer, and a poisoned dog some of the things I have to show for the effort.
But, that’s okay, because there’s only one me … Really, who else could do my job? Robert Walsh — the man who’s had two complete thoughts in the last decade? You’d be better off with Texas road kill than that nitwit.
So celebrate the dangling participle, the split infinitive, and the occasional gerund problem.
Because, in the end, who really gives a flying fuck?
October 13th, 2015 at 5:11 pm
Alive no longer.
U.S. Supreme Court denied Watson’s application today.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docketfiles/15a293.htm