Meares to Young: Respond or step down

By Mark Boxley
of The Daily Times

In an election-year judicial controversy that has spanned months, questions about the Blount County Circuit Court's Local Rules have come down to an order from Circuit Judge Michael Meares.

That order -- filed Friday -- calls the "Presiding Judge" section of the Rules into question, claims the section includes language giving authority outside of the law, and declares it void altogether.

Meares asserts his ability to address the issue as a part of his "authority and obligation to act with respect to (his) administrative responsibilities."

After a fact-finding campaign that some have called political posturing on the part of Meares, the judge is blunt in the summary of the information he has gathered in recent weeks.

"This court has not found and does not imply by its inquiries the misconduct of any individual," Meares wrote in the order. "Nevertheless, the Presiding Judge's (Blount County Circuit Judge W. Dale Young) exercise of a unique administrative authority granted by a local rule adopted during the vacancy of office of the sitting judge, coupled with multiple erroneous misstatements of fact require a response or the abandonment of the oath of office."

A message left for Young seeking comment was not returned Tuesday.

The rule Meares refers to in the order -- the "Presiding Judge" section -- is called into question based on language he claims gives Young (as presiding judge) the ability to reassign cases in the Fifth Judicial District at his discretion. Meares specifically questions the validity of the passage, "... the Presiding Judge ... shall oversee the administration and be the final arbiter of the case load for the Fifth Judicial District, to include the designation of the judges to hear civil and criminal cases."

"Nowhere in the (Tennessee Code Annotated Presiding Judge) statute does language appear relative to authority as the 'final arbiter of the case load,'" Meares writes in the order. "In fact, the statute indicates that the Presiding Judge's authority is permissive rather than absolute."

Meares goes so far in his order as to allege that Young has purposefully transferred cases from Division I ("where there is no backlog of cases") to Division II ("where he (Young) believes a backlog exists"). This "runs contrary to both common sense and the law," the order states.

Meares cites instances of case reassignment -- two of which he claims were transferred to his court even though real and perceived conflicts of interest were apparent.

In Donna Phillips vs. Asbury Center Inc., Meares claims that the case was transferred to his court even though he "acted previously as counsel for a party therein."

And in Ana Matilde Calixto vs. Fernando J. Calixto, Meares writes that Young transferred the case to his court. "... In spite of the fact that (Young) has publicly claimed (in a June 18 article in the Knoxville News Sentinel) that an unnamed but 'known associate' of (Meares) was a close friend of one of the parties and further claimed that such unnamed person approached a newspaper for publicity in the case."

"Without making any assumptions about this or any other particular case, this Court states that the practice of selective reassignment permitted by the current Presiding Judge local rule inevitably raises questions which a standard, random and blind assignment rule would not," Meares' order states. "To avoid any future questions about the impartiality of our local system in the assignment or reassignment of cases, this Court is constrained to invalidate our local Presiding Judge Rule."

Meares also declares the "introductory unnumbered paragraph" of the Local Rules void, saying it is "inaccurate and was never published pursuant to Rule 18, Supreme Court Rules..."

It was not clear Tuesday the effect Meares' order would have on the authority of the court's Local Rules. But Meares himself points out in his order that "the invalidity of one portion of the local rules as found above should not invalidate the whole. While the adoption of an erroneous or irregular order issued within the court's jurisdiction may be voidable, it cannot be disregarded until reversed or set aside."