Opinion ID: 2520026
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: specific findings of the judicial conduct commission and their impact

Text: ¶39 The Judicial Conduct Commission limited the scope of its final order to eleven specific instances of untimely action by Judge Anderson. We find nothing in the additional evidence, the briefing, or the arguments before us that brings either the factual findings or the legal conclusions of the Judicial Conduct Commission into doubt. ¶40 Moreover, the specific difficulty identified by the Judicial Conduct Commission is the essential basis of the difficulty Judge Anderson now finds himself in, and into which he has plunged his colleagues on the Third District Juvenile Court bench: his untimely action on cases assigned to him; his reactions to challenges to his untimely action on those cases; and his reaction to the activities of the Judicial Conduct Commission in review of his untimely action on cases. Judge Anderson has demonstrated an inability to take responsibility for his own actions, particularly with respect to delays beyond those experienced by other judges in similar circumstances. He has instead attributed the difficulties with timely performance to the court staff and to the parties and counsel appearing before him. His resistance to suggestions from court administrators, clerical help, his colleagues, his presiding judge, and others resulted in not only a lack of correction of the difficulties described by the Judicial Conduct Commission, but also an exacerbation of those circumstances, including publicly attributing the difficulties to the ill will and bad intentions of the Director of the Office of the Guardian ad Litem, the attorneys of the Office of the Guardian ad Litem, and the attorneys of the Attorney General's office. By attributing blame and improper motives to the attorneys of the Office of the Guardian ad Litem and the Attorney General, as well as very specifically to the Director of the Office of the Guardian ad Litem, Judge Anderson has created, principally of his own making, a quagmire from which he cannot extract himself, while simultaneously bringing disrepute on himself as a judge and on the judiciary as a whole. ¶41 Judge Anderson cannot perform the duties of his office. This is because he is disqualified from hearing a substantial portion of the caseload comprising the bulk of his duties of office. He is disqualified because, first, he voluntarily disqualified himself in November 2000, and second, because since that time, he has demonstrated on the public record that he has personal animus for the attorneys of the Office of the Guardian ad Litem and the Attorney General, resulting in the public appearance of bias, as well as demonstrated actual bias. Without attorneys from those two offices, Judge Anderson cannot hear child welfare cases. Without child welfare cases in his caseload, Judge Anderson cannot perform the duties of his office. Judge Anderson's inability to perform his duties places an undue burden on the children and families whose matters would have been assigned to him, as well as upon the Third District Juvenile Court. It reduces the capacity of the judiciary to hear and timely resolve the critically important matters that would otherwise be assigned to Judge Anderson, or his successor in office, and creates a horrendous and appalling impact on the ability of the Third District Juvenile Court to meet its statutory obligations, as the presiding judge wrote in his order on recusal. [12] More significantly, however, his actions have denied Utah's citizens a neutral, effective, law-abiding judicial officer, thereby diminishing the overall effectiveness and reputation of the judiciary.