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JUDGE NO-NOS: FRIENDING A LAWYER AND GOOGLING A LITIGANT
Posted by John Simek | Sensei Enterprises
August 4, 2009
On June 1st, 2009, the ABA Journal reported that a North Carolina judge, B. Carlton Terry Jr., has been reprimanded for using the social website, Facebook, to contact and converse with a lawyer in a pending case as well as accessing the website of a party during the pendency of litigation. According to the opinion, Judge Terry, Jr. “friended” the lawyer, discussed court proceedings on the site, and referenced a poem found on a party’s website during court. At the request of the non-friended counsel, the judge disqualified himself from the trial. During the subsequent judicial standards commission hearing, the commission stated that the ex parte communications and the independent gathering of information indicated a disregard of the principles of judicial conduct. As such, Judge Terry, Jr. was publicly reprimanded and agreed that he would never repeat such conduct in the future. The opinion can be found online at http://www.aoc.state.nc.us/www/public/coa/jsc/publicreprimands/jsc08-234.pdf