Decisions By Coin Toss

Courtesy of Above the Law comes a judicial misconduct case from Virginia. A judge was ordered removed from the bench for directing a litigant in a custody matter to twice lower her pants to display a wound, making an ex parte telephone call to a hospital in the same matter and deciding two contested cases by coin toss. The violations were deemed “grave and substantial. A judge’s act of tossing a coin to decide a legal issue…suggests that courts do not decide cases on their merits but instead subject litigants to games of chance in serious matters without regard to the evidence or applicable law.” The other matter was “even more egregious… an obvious lack of concern for [the litigant’s] personal dignity or the dignity of the judicial proceedings.”(Mike Frisch)