Posted on 12/11/2007 7:14:34 PM PST by khnyny
LAS VEGAS — The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a complaint against a federal judge who awarded more than $4.8 million in judgments and fees to people with whom he had long-standing political and business ties.
U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan of Las Vegas, who was featured in a 2006 Los Angeles Times investigation into the Nevada judiciary, was cleared of allegations that he had personal connections with those involved in cases he heard.
Many of those relationships "were not of the nature or extent alleged" and didn't affect the judge's impartiality, the 9th Circuit Judicial Council said.
A special committee that interviewed more than 30 witnesses, got 16 affidavits and reviewed media coverage and court transcripts unanimously recommended that the complaint be dismissed.
Mahan, appointed to the federal bench in 2002, declined to comment. He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in October that he was "very heartened" by the findings. "All a judge has is his integrity," Mahan said. "This whole thing was an attack on my integrity, and frankly, I felt like it was an attack on the Nevada judiciary."
The court launched its investigation after The Times' series detailed how Mahan's decisions in more than a dozen cases had benefited his former law partner,...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
You can’t be serious, right? Haven’t you ever heard of Judicial “immunity” and Judicial “independence”???
That’s where the judges have legislated for themselves the right to break the law, be corrupt, act like kings (or terrorists, or both), and you have no right to do anything about it.
You can’t be serious. How many people don’t know about this?
Read it for yourself... The references are verifiable. Judges do not have to obey the law, they can be completely corrupt and there are no consequences:
http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=441
Read it for yourself... The references are verifiable. Judges do not have to obey the law, they can be completely corrupt and there are no consequences:
http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=441
:P
I new the rogue 9th Circuit was on the side of evil, but I did not know how blatant the stench of theft and corruption.
What are we to do with these evil unelected tyrants? What happened to our democracy?
Here’s another link which explores Nevada judicial corruption even further. Scary stuff.
http://donnyferguson.blogspot.com/2007/11/oj-case-chance-to-shed-light-on.html
Full Disclosure. I know Judge Mahan personally. I knew him before he was appointed and I’ve been to a handful of GOP fundraisers with him (he is a Republican).
I can easily see the distortion in this LA Times story since I know some of the people involved.
Here is one of the problems which the LAT can’t grasp. There are only three Federal Judges in Las Vegas who take cases. Three! And one of them is an 80 year old senior judge who rarely takes cases himself. And Mahan takes more cases than the other Nevada judge so he gets a major of the cases. But you don’t get to pick which judge you get even though you are about 60% likely to catch Mahan if you file in Las Vegas Federal courts.
Mahan is and has been a very well respected guy. Even the trial lawyers like him. The comment I heard from a tort lawyer I spoke to recently about Mahan was ‘he know exactly what we will get from Judge Mahan because he rules only on what is already in the law’.
Now, if we want to talk about Federal judges in Los Angeles..... I can name a few who are literally deranged/senile and a couple which are trial lawyer rest havens.
The other main problem is that Las Vegas is a very small area. If you’ve been here for 20 years or more and in business of any kind, you probably know Judge Mahan as well. Go back twenty years and most lawyers have one degree of separation. You can’t find a lawyer who hasn’t either served with, been a partner of or personally litigated against or in front of every other lawyer in town.
It was only in the last decade that Las Vegas blew up in size and became home to 2M people. Go back to the 80’s and we had something like 200,000 people total in the metro area. That translates into only dozens of lawyers back then so the ‘conflicts’ are unavoidable.
It’s possible that this corrupt Nevada judge had some of his friends in the mob send a little message to the judges in the Ninth Circus. Maybe they simply feared for their lives.
Having only three Federal Judges in LV is certainly a problem. LV will only continue to grow in the future and having the entire Federal Judiciary controlled by three judges (including one whom you describe as exceeding his shelf life) seems a little suspect.
I originally noticed this story on Judicial Watch. Personally, I think if a Judge has financial ties to a defendant, there is no excuse for not recusing himself from the case.
http://judicialwatch.org/blog/federal-judge-who-awarded-friends-millions-cleared
You forgot to include for judges to take their neighbors land.
It’s sleazy but Judges have been appointing buddies and cronies as court appointed recievers for 200 years. It stinks but it’s business as usual.
The conflict of interest standard is a little different. I’ll explain the normal circumstance and I’m sure you’ll agree that it isn’t just a bright line between good and evil.
If a judge went to school with a lawyer and worked a case or two with him in the past sees that lawyer appear before him on a case, the judge does not have the obligation to recuse himself. He does have the obligation and duty to disclose to the lawyer on the other side that he has previous personal contact with the lawyer in question. If they had a business relationship in the past, that should also be disclosed. If they currently have a business relationship, its a non-starter and recusal should be mandatory.
Lets say that judge tells the defendants lawyer that he went to law school with the plaintiffs lawyer and later worked on the same side on a few civil cases. The defense lawyer now has the option of either making the motion for the judge to recuse himself - which could be done verbally right there in the courtroom typically - or the defense lawyer could simply decide that there is no substantative issue in the present case where he or his client would be harmed.
In many of these cases, BOTH lawyers know the judge personally and/or have some contact. In Nevada, lawyers can donate to judges election and re-election campaigns (up until Federal court where they are appointed by POTUS). Both lawyers know the judge pretty well and both also probably know if one of the lawyers had practiced in the same firm or on specific cases with one of the lawyers in the case.
The real damage is when a judge rules on a case in favor of a lawyer and his client where he did have a prior involvement with that lawyer but did not disclose it in open court or ‘in camera’ (in his chambers privately) to both counsels.
In the case of Judge Mahan, the reason there was no charges filed against him is because there was nothing hidden from the lawyers on the losing side. Both lawyers know the judge since he had been on the bench for years prior to this case. One lawyer is upset that he lost but he can’t point to anything factual which showed the judge to be biased or he would have filed an ethics complaint with the State Bar.
The cases involved sound like they are some big hidden conspiracy but in real life this is an incredibly small community. It is really, really hard to believe we have two million people in the Las Vegas area now. But it was only 1.7M back in 2002 and only 1.5M back in 1999. Literally every lawyer in town who has been practicing in Las Vegas for more than 10 years knows everybody. It took me two years to personally meet every single politician in the GOP from the City Council to the Governor and the entire Congressional delegation. And I didn’t have to make a real effort or donate a dime to anyones campaign.
The reason the 9th Circuit panel found that the conflicts were ‘less than stated’ was because nobody could find a ‘there’ there. The people he appointed to be special masters were experienced people. And they were not the only people Judge Mahan appointed to do these jobs.
We are getting one more judge in the Nevada district of the 9th Circus (finally) and I think there is still one more open seat to fill. But because Nevada has such a small population compared to CA, we don’t get many judges. And honestly, there aren’t all that many cases so they are only somewhat overworked.
The best thing which could happen would be to split up the 9th Circus to included just CA, WA, OR & HI. And we could let AK, ID, MT, UT, NV & AZ start a 13th Circuit and have our own appellate district. This would avoid a San Francisco Judge from being on a 3 judge panel to shoot down voter initiatives like the ones making English the official language.
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