Judge showed UA bias, e-mail suit plaintiff says
Posted on Wednesday, November 7, 2007
An attorney for a Mount Ida man who filed suit against University of Arkansas System President B. Alan Sugg and UA Chancellor John A. White said the judge who dismissed his suit was biased in favor of the university.
In a response filed Tuesday in the state Supreme Court, Eddie Christian said some comments by Circuit Judge Mark Lindsay “exhibited bias, or at the very least, the appearance of a bias in favor of the appellees.” Christian represents John David Terry, who filed suit in Washington County Circuit Court, alleging that the handling by Sugg and White of the investigation of an e-mail sent to former Razorback quarterback Mitch Mustain was insufficient.
Lindsay dismissed the suit and subsequently held Christian in contempt. Both the dismissal and the contempt finding were appealed to the state high court.
Christian quoted the judge as saying: “I believe that there is good logic in the public policy of not having the courts get involved in this. As I put it a while ago, if Chancellor White is happy, if President Sugg is happy, if the trustees are happy, then it’s none of my business.” Christian said that statement represented the judge’s bias.
“These comments went far beyond an expression of the applicable legal standard: in fact, it demonstrated that the standard had been divested of any meaning beyond the happiness of the university officials, two of whom were the named party defendants,” Christian wrote.
“Once their happiness had been established to the satisfaction of the court, then it became ‘none of my business.’ That was not the appropriate standard of review,” his filing said.
In a separate filing in the Supreme Court, attorneys for the university didn’t oppose Christian’s effort to join a second appeal to the first one. The second appeal — of a contempt order issued by Lindsay — was filed a week after the judge issued the order finding him in contempt.
In their filing, university attorneys Woody Bassett and Scott Varady referred to Lindsay’s June 26 order dismissing two of the initial aspects of the case but allowing Christian to “re-plead” on two other issues.
The attorneys included a transcript of a portion of the June 4 proceedings at which the terms of the June 26 dismissal order were discussed Mr. Christian: “As it relates to the illegal exaction and mandamus claims, the court’s granting us 20 days to re-plead if we choose to do so.” The court: “Yes.” Mr. Christian: “All Right. We are not going to go try to do any discovery. We’ll agree that should be held in abeyance until that 20 days runs and we re-plead and further rulings of the court.” The university attorneys said Christian violated that order when he filed a subpoena for further e-mails from a witness in the case, an employee with the state Department of Finance and Administration.
They said that Christian’s subpoena didn’t inform the state agency of a portion of Lindsay’s court order, which the lawyers said was a “directive not to respond to discovery requests.” “Unknown to appellees and their counsel, the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration produced more than 800 e-mails of third-party witness Sherri Darby to appellant’s counsel in response to the surreptitious subpoena,” the university’s lawyers wrote.
“Mr. Christian then took action to ensure the widest possible dissemination of the unlawfully obtained e-mails,” the lawyers said.
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