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Judiciary

Insurance case is ‘but a speck in the recesses of interstellar space,’ high-profile appeals judge writes

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 28, 2025, 3:07 pm CDT

In a span of less than a week, a conservative federal appeals judge has written two opinions that are getting attention—for taking a tough stand against the mistaken deportation of an immigrant in one case and for waxing philosophical in another case.

In an April 17 opinion, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III took the Trump administration to task for “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process.”

Wilkinson wrote the “blistering” opinion for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Virginia, in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia of Maryland, according to the New York Times.

Abrego Garcia was deported to a prison in El Salvador in Central America because of an “administrative error.” The case is Abrego Garcia v. Noem.

Now, Wilkinson is getting attention once again for an April 23 opinion in an insurance dispute involving a man on a lawn mower struck and killed by an underinsured motorist, according to Above the Law and the Judicial Notice newsletter at Original Jurisdiction.

The 4th Circuit held that the man’s estate was entitled to $150,000 under the plain terms of the man’s underinsured motorist coverage—and nothing more.

Wilkinson engaged in “existential, metaphysical musings” at the end of his opinion, according to Judicial Notice.

Here is what Wilkinson wrote: “What after all does it matter? A single, seemingly ordinary, rather technical insurance case. One among the many hundreds of rulings judges make each year.

“What does it matter? A case but a speck in the recesses of interstellar space and in the four-plus billion years since our solar system’s birth. What does it matter, this case deserted by both space and time?

“To be human is to live in the here and now. This small case extracts courageous meaning from the vast impersonality in which it resides. Its immediacy confounds infinity; its passions light the dark. We have given it our best; the litigants have given it their best. The trial court has done the same. We do not overlook for a moment the tragic passing of the insured but neither can we ignore the contract under South Carolina law that defines the insurer’s obligation.”

The insurance case is Owners Insurance Co. v. Walsh.

Wilkinson, 80, was appointed to the 4th Circuit by former President Ronald Reagan, the New York Times reports in a story about his background. He is the “son of a patrician Virginia banker,” an Army veteran and a law grad of the University of Virginia.

He delayed his legal education after one year to unsuccessfully run for Congress in 1970 as a Republican. After law school, he worked as a law professor and in the U.S. Department of Justice.

On the bench, the New York Times reports, Wilkinson has “a long track record of conservative rulings under his belt, having criticized rulings establishing abortion rights while writing approvingly of a broad conception of presidential power.”

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Trials & Litigation

Judge accuses high-profile law firms of possible effort to ‘gum up the works’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 22, 2024, 12:49 pm CDT

A federal judge in Boston complained during a status conference Friday that lawyers from three high-profile law firms had filed so many motions and documents that they were failing to keep litigation just, speedy and inexpensive, as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts scolded 11 lawyers involved in litigation over the sale of a Mexican funeral company.

Law360 has the story, summarized by Above the Law.

On the one side are lawyers from Boies Schiller Flexner, who represent Servicios Funerarios GG, a Mexican company alleging that it was misled about the financial condition of a funeral business that it bought.

On the other side are lawyers with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and with Ropes & Gray. They represent the Advent International Corp., a U.S. private equity investment company with control of the entities that owned the funeral business before its sale.

After Servicios Funerarios filed the fraud lawsuit, the Advent International Corp. filed counterclaims claiming that it was being extorted.

Talwani said the document-heavy litigation appeared to be “an effort to try to gum up the works.” Law360 published her comments.

“I don’t understand how 11 lawyers can jointly make what we are doing here difficult,” Talwani said. “It is not serving you well—your clients paying your bills—and I do want you to pass this message to your client: In order to try to keep your bills down, it would be helpful to try and figure out whether there are some things that don’t have to be fought about.”

“That might serve your clients,” Talwani said. “It might not serve your pocketbooks, and you can tell your clients that was my comment.”

Talwani spoke after the two sides were unable to agree on a litigation timeline. However, the issues extend beyond the Massachusetts case.

“The litigation has proved complicated,” Law360 reports, “as arrest warrants were filed against Advent personnel in the U.S. and Mexico.”

In addition, a related suit in Delaware chancery court sought to enforce terms of the sale agreement.

Carlos Sires of Boies Schiller Flexner told Law360 that its client “shares the court’s frustration and requested the conference because it wanted to address the delays caused by [the Advent International Corp.’s] objections to the depositions of some of its key employees involved in the [funeral home] transaction.”

Lawyers with Quinn Emanuel and Ropes & Gray did not immediately provide a comment to the ABA Journal in response to its emailed request.

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Ethics

District attorney ‘paid little attention to the five-alarm fire’ in high-profile case and should be disbarred, panel says

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 16, 2024, 11:07 am CDT

A Colorado district attorney should be disbarred mostly for her “absence at the helm” in a high-profile murder case in which prosecutors failed to turn over sufficient expert witness information to the defense, leading to the exclusion of experts, according to a Colorado disciplinary hearing board.

In a Sept. 10 decision, the board recommended disbarment for District Attorney Linda Stanley of the 11th Judicial District in Colorado. She has the option of appealing the order.

The Denver Post (via the Legal Profession Blog), the Associated Press and Law360 have coverage of the decision.

The disciplinary board said Stanley failed to adequately oversee the murder prosecution of Barry Morphew. She also initiated a baseless domestic-abuse investigation of the presiding judge who barred many of the prosecution’s expert witnesses.

Morphew’s wife disappeared on a bike ride in May 2020. The prosecution dropped the charges in April 2022, nine days before the scheduled start of the trial. Morphew has said he is innocent.

Stanley sought the probe of the judge after hearing that his ex-wife was an advocate of for domestic-abuse victims. The ex-wife told Stanley’s investigator that she had never been abused.

Stanley also made improper remarks to the media in the Morphew case and a fatal child-abuse case, the board found. Stanley had said she thought that her remarks in the second case were off the record.

Stanley’s “absence at the helm” in the Morphew case ended with it “running aground,” the board said in an opinion by Presiding Disciplinary Judge Bryon M. Large.

Discovery issues included a massive amount of information that the sheriff’s office delivered on a hard drive to prosecutors without a useful organization. A hard drive of the information was hand delivered to the defense. But bandwidth issues made integrating the material into an e-discovery platform difficult.

In addition, the lead prosecutor on the case said he felt taxed and overwhelmed. He resigned in October 2021. A replacement agreed to work only part time and had trouble accessing discovery information online.

Stanley “was aware, from the time the sheriff’s office delivered to her office a ten-terabyte hard drive of information, that the sheer volume of disorganized, unlabeled discovery promised to pose a problem for the prosecution,” the hearing board said. “The prosecution never truly had a command of the universe of discovery.”

After the lead prosecutor resigned, Stanley failed to designate a new lead counsel, creating confusion.

“Lawyers pointed us to no one—or worse still, to one another—when asked to identify lead counsel,” the hearing board said.

Stanley also failed her team when it became apparent that it was struggling to compile expert-witness information before a deadline and when she learned that the defense was seeking to exclude expert testimony because of failings, according to the hearing board.

Although Stanley “was aware of these very serious developments, she paid little attention to the five-alarm fire and instead relied on [two other lawyers] to extinguish the blaze,” the hearing board majority said.

Stanley’s “failure to ensure her team interviewed experts, reviewed expert reports and statements, and disclosed all facts and data underlying those statements represents an abdication of her supervisory duties,” the majority concluded.

Stanley’s “failure to rise to the moment when so much was at stake” cannot be overlooked, the majority said.

A dissenting panel member, Sherry A. Caloia, would have imposed a suspension of two and a half years rather than disbarment. She expressed concern that the Morphew case “has undergone an extensive amount of Monday-morning quarterbacking.”

Stanley “put very capable and experienced lawyers in charge of the Morphew case,” and she relied on their expertise, Caloia said.

Stanley is a 2010 graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law who previously worked as a police officer and a truck driver. When she took office, she said it was buried in a backlog of cases and hampered by prosecutorial vacancies.

Steve Jensen, Stanley’s lawyer, told the Denver Post that he and his client disagree with the decision.

“This was a hard-fought trial but we do not think that Ms. Stanley’s conduct deserves disbarment, period,” he said. “And I believe Ms. Stanley is a good person and also an ethical attorney.”

Jensen told the Associated Press that she was a district attorney in a rural area and didn’t have much experience in high-profile cases, she had fewer resources than prosecutors in urban areas, and she had a difficult time finding prosecutors to work on the case.

Jensen told the Associated Press that he and Stanley were considering whether to appeal.