A federal court has permanently barred Ann Williams and her tax preparation firm, Ann's Tax Service, from preparing federal tax returns. The Department of Justice says that the civil injunction order—to which Williams and Ann's Tax Service agreed without admitting the allegations against them—has been signed by U.S. District Judge James J. Brady of Baton Rouge. The government alleged that Williams, of Morganza, and her business had repeatedly prepared false federal income tax returns that understated customers' tax liabilities. According to the complaint, Williams inflated or fabricated business expenses, reported fictitious business income, and fraudulently claimed the earned-income credit on customers' tax returns. Prosecutors allege Williams' fraudulent practices may have resulted in as much as $2.2 million in lost tax revenue.
Leading state officials remembered former U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola as a man who lived for the law. He died at the age of 71 on Feb. 24. Polozola had been battling cancer for years, says Chief Judge Brian Jackson of the Baton Rouge-based Middle District of Louisiana.
Chief Judge Brian Jackson of the U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Louisiana has confirmed that federal Judge Frank Polozola died on Sunday after a long battle with cancer, WAFB-TV reports. Polozola was sworn in as a U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Louisiana on May 29, 1980, after having been nominated by President Jimmy Carter. He served as Chief Judge of the Middle District of Louisiana from Sept. 1, 1998, to Aug. 31, 2005, and became a Senior Judge on Jan. 15, 2007. Prior to his appointment by Carter, Polozola served as part-time Magistrate Judge from April 1972 until he was appointed the first full-time Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Louisiana in October 1973. No further details were available as of press time on Polozola's death.
President Barack Obama has renominated Shelly Deckert Dick to fill a vacancy on the federal bench in Baton Rouge. Dick, a Baton Rouge attorney, originally was nominated in April 2012. She is one of 33 candidates for federal judgeships who were renominated Thursday by Obama. Dick answered questions before a Senate panel last month, but the full Senate did not vote on her nomination before the conclusion of the 112th Congress. The president says in a statement that many of the nominations "could have and should have been confirmed" before the Senate adjourned. Dick was nominated to fill the seat in the Middle District of Louisiana left vacant by the death of Chief U.S. District Judge Ralph Tyson. She is a founding partner at the Baton Rouge law firm of Forrester & Dick.
A federal prosecutor demoted for anonymously posting comments on a newspaper's website has retired. A Justice Department spokesman confirms today that Jan Mann and her husband, fellow prosecutor Jim Mann, both retired from the U.S. attorney's office in New Orleans. Jan Mann was the top assistant to former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten before he demoted her last month. Letten resigned earlier this month amid a Justice Department probe of comments that she and another prosecutor, Sal Perricone, posted on nola.com, a companion website of The Times-Picayune. Perricone resigned in March after acknowledging he criticized judges and politicians and commented on cases in his online posts under a name that was not his own. Mann didn't admit to posting the comments until after a defamation suit was filed against her by the owner of a landfill at the center of a federal probe.
If ever a case could be made against electing judges, the just-concluded race for the 5th District seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court might be a good place to start.
Baton Rouge attorney Shelly Dick has gotten another green light in her quest to become a federal district judge for the Middle District of Louisiana. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on her judicial nomination for Wednesday, and Dick could be confirmed by the full Senate before the end of the year. The announcement comes after Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter ended his block of her nomination. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, recommended Dick and two other possible nominees to President Barack Obama over a year ago to fill the judgeship left vacant by the death of Chief U.S. District Judge Ralph Tyson. Obama nominated Dick in April, but Vitter—citing the impending election—withheld his support in hopes of a victory for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Vitter threw his support behind Dick's nomination one week after Obama won re-election. Dick, a Texas native, is a founding partner in Forrester & Dick, a boutique firm. She has...
Critics of District Judge Tim Kelley's recent voucher ruling are publicly speculating that he must have had his mind made up ahead of time, given that he issued a lengthy legal opinion Nov. 30 after only two days of testimony. But Kelley says there's a simple reason the 39-page opinion was issued so quickly: He had been working ahead. "They submitted their briefs months ago," he says. The decision hinged on a few basic legal issues that were clear well in advance, although the parties were given the opportunity to present testimony to see if there might be any factual issues that might influence the decision. "There weren't any," Kelley says. "So it's not as though it was magic that it got written overnight. I had it for two months." Kelley ruled that the funding mechanism the state is using to pay for the voucher program is unconstitutional; the state will...
With Saturday's election just days away, Louisiana Supreme Court District 5 candidate Jeff Hughes has taken to heavily courting his home base of Livingston Parish and other parts of the Capital Region with an unusual eight-page tabloid newspaper, casting himself as the Leave It To Beaver candidate. The piece, dubbed the "Louisiana Judicial Report," bears the official state seal and is filled with stories about the Republican judge growing up "in the Denham Springs of 1950s-1960s." There are plenty of black-and-white photos of the era, including one family portrait from his childhood captioned "Leave It To Beaver" and another of him shooting hoops in high school. Race remains a subtle campaign theme. Hughes, who previously has referred to his Democratic opponent John Michael Guidry as an "affirmative action" candidate, points out in the tabloid that his fellow judge's political base is "the inner city of Baton Rouge and majority black precincts in the River Parishes," while...
One of the more closely watched contests in the Baton Rouge area was the race to fill the 5th District seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court, which is being vacated by retiring Chief Justice Catherine “Kitty” Kimball. No fewer than eight candidates, including six sitting judges and two attorneys, spent millions collectively in a campaign that propelled judicial electioneering to new heights, or lows, depending on your perspective.
It sounds like the opening lines of another lawyer joke: Six sitting judges are running for one seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court. A poll comes out, and guess who's leading?
The number of judges vying for retiring Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball's seat has kept campaign contributions fairly well locked up—until now. First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jewel "Duke" Welch appears to be the favored candidate by a heavy-hitting group of trial attorneys. Last night, more than 30 prominent local trial lawyers threw a fundraiser for Welch at the French Market Bistro. Scott Andrews, who is chairing Welch's campaign committee, won't say how much the event raised but says turnout was high. Word on the street is that the "civil justice lawyers," as they like to call themselves, are unofficially supporting Welch, a Republican candidate who recently switched political parties. The Louisiana Association for Justice, however—formerly the Trial Lawyers Association—does not officially endorse candidates, and a spokesman with the group denies that it is coalescing behind any single candidate. For his part, Andrews says...
With six judges and two attorneys in the race for Louisiana Supreme Court, it's no surprise voters are at a loss as to whom to support. But a new poll shows just how wide open the contest is at this point, with nearly one-third of voters in the eight-parish district—28%—saying they are undecided as to whom they would vote for were the race held today. The second-highest percentage of voters in the poll, 18%, support attorney Mary Olive Pierson, whose campaign paid for the poll conducted by Washington, D.C., consultant James Gerstein of GBA Strategies. Close behind Pierson are appellate judges John Michael Guidry, 16%, and Toni Higginbotham, 14%. The other candidates in the race each polled the single digits: judges Jeff Hughes, 8%; Tim Kelley, 7%; Duke Welch, 5%; Bill Morvant, 4%; and attorney Jeffry Sanford, less than 1%. Pierson, whose campaign began as something of a lighthearted protest against the number of sitting judges in the race—and the potential conflict...
Indeed, this is our 30th anniversary issue, yet when looking back at how Baton Rouge has grown, evolved and sprawled into the Capital Region over the past three decades, one must actually go back 31 years, to 1981. That was the year in which a U.S. district judge by the name of John Parker issued a legal ruling that not only instituted the intended consequence of forced public school busing in East Baton Rouge Parish, but also had the unintended consequence of becoming the flashpoint for what we now call the Capital Region.
Baton Rouge attorney Jeffry Sanford knows he's a long-shot candidate in the hotly contested race for the 5th District Louisiana Supreme Court seat, which includes a candidate field of six sitting judges and prominent local lawyer Mary Olive Pierson. Sanford has never held an elected seat—or even run for one—and he's the only independent in the race. "I think it gives me a competitive advantage due to the fact that one-third of voters in Louisiana are independents who are tired of the partisan politics," says Sanford, who cut ties with the Republican party in 1996 and has been an independent ever since. Sanford says he'll primarily self-fund his campaign, but that the grassroots effort is beginning to garner some donations, albeit very small ones. "I just got one of my first campaign contributions here, in the amount of $35, and there's another one around here for $15," Sanford says. "That's the way it's going to happen for me. It's going to be hard, certainly, with so...
Attorney Mary Olive Pierson's campaign for the Louisiana Supreme Court may have started as something of a joke—a protest against the fact that six sitting judges are duking it out for the seat being vacated by retiring Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball. But Pierson's run for the high court is no longer a laughing matter: This week she hired Washington, D.C.-based consultant Jim Gerstein of GBA Strategies to do polling for her campaign. She is also negotiating with a Washington, D.C., media consultant to handle her campaign ads, though she is not ready to disclose the name of the firm. "This isn't going to be a lightweight campaign," Pierson says. "If we're going to do it, we're going to do it right." GBA Strategies has done work for several Louisiana campaigns and includes among its list of clients dozens of prominent elected officials, organizations and businesses, including U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the National Education Association and Google. Perhaps more...
Twenty-two state appeals court judgeships are on the Nov. 6 ballot, but voters will only make choices in five of those races. More than three-quarters of the jobs were handed to candidates because they attracted no opposition before the qualifying period closed Friday. Just one state appeals court race with challengers encompasses East Baton Rouge Parish. "It's a normal pattern," says Ginger Sawyer, who has followed judicial races for two decades in her work for the LABI. While most of those elected without opposition were incumbents, five candidates are getting 10-year appellate court terms for the first time without even a challenge. All are district court judges moving up the judicial system ladder. In Louisiana, elections for the judiciary often attract interest only from the business and legal communities that are most invested in the outcome of court decisions. Stacia Haynie, a political science professor at LSU, calls judicial races "low-information elections" where incumbents...
Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson says her colleagues don't have the authority to decide who is entitled to become the court's next chief justice. Addressing a panel of state lawmakers today in New Orleans, Johnson says that she rejected a compromise that would have forced her to wait until 2017 to become chief justice. Johnson says Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball suggested to her that two other justices, Jeffrey Victory and Jeannette Knoll, should serve as chief justice and serve out their terms before Johnson took the position. Johnson has sued to block her colleagues from debating and voting on whether she or Victory qualifies as the longest-serving justice once Kimball retires next year. The debate hinges on whether Johnson's first few years on the court count toward her seniority.
A federal judge has scheduled a status conference to discuss a Louisiana Supreme Court justice's bid to block her colleagues from debating and voting on whether she is entitled to become the court's next chief justice. U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan scheduled this afternoon's conference at the request of attorneys for Justice Bernette Johnson. The meeting is closed to the public. Johnson filed suit earlier this month after Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball set a July 31 deadline for the justices to weigh in with briefs on which colleague is the "oldest in point of service" under the terms of the Louisiana Constitution. Johnson and Justice Jeffrey Victory both stake claims to being the court's longest-serving justice and thus the rightful successor to Kimball, who retires next year.
Federal judge permanently shuts down B.R. tax preparer
A federal court has permanently barred Ann Williams and her tax preparation firm, Ann's Tax Service, from preparing federal tax returns. The Department of Justice says that the civil injunction order—to which Williams and Ann's Tax Service agreed without admitting the allegations against them—has been signed by U.S. District Judge James J. Brady of Baton Rouge. The government alleged that Williams, of Morganza, and her business had repeatedly prepared false federal income tax returns that understated customers' tax liabilities. According to the complaint, Williams inflated or fabricated business expenses, reported fictitious business income, and fraudulently claimed the earned-income credit on customers' tax returns. Prosecutors allege Williams' fraudulent practices may have resulted in as much as $2.2 million in lost tax revenue.
Polozola remembered
Leading state officials remembered former U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola as a man who lived for the law. He died at the age of 71 on Feb. 24. Polozola had been battling cancer for years, says Chief Judge Brian Jackson of the Baton Rouge-based Middle District of Louisiana.
Federal Judge Frank Polozola dies
Chief Judge Brian Jackson of the U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Louisiana has confirmed that federal Judge Frank Polozola died on Sunday after a long battle with cancer, WAFB-TV reports. Polozola was sworn in as a U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Louisiana on May 29, 1980, after having been nominated by President Jimmy Carter. He served as Chief Judge of the Middle District of Louisiana from Sept. 1, 1998, to Aug. 31, 2005, and became a Senior Judge on Jan. 15, 2007. Prior to his appointment by Carter, Polozola served as part-time Magistrate Judge from April 1972 until he was appointed the first full-time Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Louisiana in October 1973. No further details were available as of press time on Polozola's death.
Local lawyer renominated for federal judgeship in Baton Rouge
President Barack Obama has renominated Shelly Deckert Dick to fill a vacancy on the federal bench in Baton Rouge. Dick, a Baton Rouge attorney, originally was nominated in April 2012. She is one of 33 candidates for federal judgeships who were renominated Thursday by Obama. Dick answered questions before a Senate panel last month, but the full Senate did not vote on her nomination before the conclusion of the 112th Congress. The president says in a statement that many of the nominations "could have and should have been confirmed" before the Senate adjourned. Dick was nominated to fill the seat in the Middle District of Louisiana left vacant by the death of Chief U.S. District Judge Ralph Tyson. She is a founding partner at the Baton Rouge law firm of Forrester & Dick.
Two federal prosecutors retire amid online posts probe
A federal prosecutor demoted for anonymously posting comments on a newspaper's website has retired. A Justice Department spokesman confirms today that Jan Mann and her husband, fellow prosecutor Jim Mann, both retired from the U.S. attorney's office in New Orleans. Jan Mann was the top assistant to former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten before he demoted her last month. Letten resigned earlier this month amid a Justice Department probe of comments that she and another prosecutor, Sal Perricone, posted on nola.com, a companion website of The Times-Picayune. Perricone resigned in March after acknowledging he criticized judges and politicians and commented on cases in his online posts under a name that was not his own. Mann didn't admit to posting the comments until after a defamation suit was filed against her by the owner of a landfill at the center of a federal probe.
Here comes the judge
Baton Rouge attorney Shelly Dick has gotten another green light in her quest to become a federal district judge in the Middle District of Louisiana.
Race for cash
If ever a case could be made against electing judges, the just-concluded race for the 5th District seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court might be a good place to start.
Judicial nomination hearing set for B.R. attorney next week
Baton Rouge attorney Shelly Dick has gotten another green light in her quest to become a federal district judge for the Middle District of Louisiana. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on her judicial nomination for Wednesday, and Dick could be confirmed by the full Senate before the end of the year. The announcement comes after Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter ended his block of her nomination. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, recommended Dick and two other possible nominees to President Barack Obama over a year ago to fill the judgeship left vacant by the death of Chief U.S. District Judge Ralph Tyson. Obama nominated Dick in April, but Vitter—citing the impending election—withheld his support in hopes of a victory for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Vitter threw his support behind Dick's nomination one week after Obama won re-election. Dick, a Texas native, is a founding partner in Forrester & Dick, a boutique firm. She has...
Judge says legal issues in voucher case were clear before trial
Critics of District Judge Tim Kelley's recent voucher ruling are publicly speculating that he must have had his mind made up ahead of time, given that he issued a lengthy legal opinion Nov. 30 after only two days of testimony. But Kelley says there's a simple reason the 39-page opinion was issued so quickly: He had been working ahead. "They submitted their briefs months ago," he says. The decision hinged on a few basic legal issues that were clear well in advance, although the parties were given the opportunity to present testimony to see if there might be any factual issues that might influence the decision. "There weren't any," Kelley says. "So it's not as though it was magic that it got written overnight. I had it for two months." Kelley ruled that the funding mechanism the state is using to pay for the voucher program is unconstitutional; the state will...
'Leave It To Beaver' emerges in Supreme Court race
With Saturday's election just days away, Louisiana Supreme Court District 5 candidate Jeff Hughes has taken to heavily courting his home base of Livingston Parish and other parts of the Capital Region with an unusual eight-page tabloid newspaper, casting himself as the Leave It To Beaver candidate. The piece, dubbed the "Louisiana Judicial Report," bears the official state seal and is filled with stories about the Republican judge growing up "in the Denham Springs of 1950s-1960s." There are plenty of black-and-white photos of the era, including one family portrait from his childhood captioned "Leave It To Beaver" and another of him shooting hoops in high school. Race remains a subtle campaign theme. Hughes, who previously has referred to his Democratic opponent John Michael Guidry as an "affirmative action" candidate, points out in the tabloid that his fellow judge's political base is "the inner city of Baton Rouge and majority black precincts in the River Parishes," while...
Contentious runoff
One of the more closely watched contests in the Baton Rouge area was the race to fill the 5th District seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court, which is being vacated by retiring Chief Justice Catherine “Kitty” Kimball. No fewer than eight candidates, including six sitting judges and two attorneys, spent millions collectively in a campaign that propelled judicial electioneering to new heights, or lows, depending on your perspective.
Courting power
It sounds like the opening lines of another lawyer joke: Six sitting judges are running for one seat on the Louisiana Supreme Court. A poll comes out, and guess who's leading?
Welch gets backing of prominent attorneys in La. Supreme Court race
The number of judges vying for retiring Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball's seat has kept campaign contributions fairly well locked up—until now. First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jewel "Duke" Welch appears to be the favored candidate by a heavy-hitting group of trial attorneys. Last night, more than 30 prominent local trial lawyers threw a fundraiser for Welch at the French Market Bistro. Scott Andrews, who is chairing Welch's campaign committee, won't say how much the event raised but says turnout was high. Word on the street is that the "civil justice lawyers," as they like to call themselves, are unofficially supporting Welch, a Republican candidate who recently switched political parties. The Louisiana Association for Justice, however—formerly the Trial Lawyers Association—does not officially endorse candidates, and a spokesman with the group denies that it is coalescing behind any single candidate. For his part, Andrews says...
Poll shows Pierson leading Supreme Court race, lots of undecided voters
With six judges and two attorneys in the race for Louisiana Supreme Court, it's no surprise voters are at a loss as to whom to support. But a new poll shows just how wide open the contest is at this point, with nearly one-third of voters in the eight-parish district—28%—saying they are undecided as to whom they would vote for were the race held today. The second-highest percentage of voters in the poll, 18%, support attorney Mary Olive Pierson, whose campaign paid for the poll conducted by Washington, D.C., consultant James Gerstein of GBA Strategies. Close behind Pierson are appellate judges John Michael Guidry, 16%, and Toni Higginbotham, 14%. The other candidates in the race each polled the single digits: judges Jeff Hughes, 8%; Tim Kelley, 7%; Duke Welch, 5%; Bill Morvant, 4%; and attorney Jeffry Sanford, less than 1%. Pierson, whose campaign began as something of a lighthearted protest against the number of sitting judges in the race—and the potential conflict...
A defining decision
Indeed, this is our 30th anniversary issue, yet when looking back at how Baton Rouge has grown, evolved and sprawled into the Capital Region over the past three decades, one must actually go back 31 years, to 1981. That was the year in which a U.S. district judge by the name of John Parker issued a legal ruling that not only instituted the intended consequence of forced public school busing in East Baton Rouge Parish, but also had the unintended consequence of becoming the flashpoint for what we now call the Capital Region.
Sanford pins Supreme Court hopes on reaching independent voters
Baton Rouge attorney Jeffry Sanford knows he's a long-shot candidate in the hotly contested race for the 5th District Louisiana Supreme Court seat, which includes a candidate field of six sitting judges and prominent local lawyer Mary Olive Pierson. Sanford has never held an elected seat—or even run for one—and he's the only independent in the race. "I think it gives me a competitive advantage due to the fact that one-third of voters in Louisiana are independents who are tired of the partisan politics," says Sanford, who cut ties with the Republican party in 1996 and has been an independent ever since. Sanford says he'll primarily self-fund his campaign, but that the grassroots effort is beginning to garner some donations, albeit very small ones. "I just got one of my first campaign contributions here, in the amount of $35, and there's another one around here for $15," Sanford says. "That's the way it's going to happen for me. It's going to be hard, certainly, with so...
Pierson's run for La. Supreme Court getting serious
Attorney Mary Olive Pierson's campaign for the Louisiana Supreme Court may have started as something of a joke—a protest against the fact that six sitting judges are duking it out for the seat being vacated by retiring Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball. But Pierson's run for the high court is no longer a laughing matter: This week she hired Washington, D.C.-based consultant Jim Gerstein of GBA Strategies to do polling for her campaign. She is also negotiating with a Washington, D.C., media consultant to handle her campaign ads, though she is not ready to disclose the name of the firm. "This isn't going to be a lightweight campaign," Pierson says. "If we're going to do it, we're going to do it right." GBA Strategies has done work for several Louisiana campaigns and includes among its list of clients dozens of prominent elected officials, organizations and businesses, including U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the National Education Association and Google. Perhaps more...
Few La. appeals court judges get election challenges
Twenty-two state appeals court judgeships are on the Nov. 6 ballot, but voters will only make choices in five of those races. More than three-quarters of the jobs were handed to candidates because they attracted no opposition before the qualifying period closed Friday. Just one state appeals court race with challengers encompasses East Baton Rouge Parish. "It's a normal pattern," says Ginger Sawyer, who has followed judicial races for two decades in her work for the LABI. While most of those elected without opposition were incumbents, five candidates are getting 10-year appellate court terms for the first time without even a challenge. All are district court judges moving up the judicial system ladder. In Louisiana, elections for the judiciary often attract interest only from the business and legal communities that are most invested in the outcome of court decisions. Stacia Haynie, a political science professor at LSU, calls judicial races "low-information elections" where incumbents...
Justice rejected deal to name next La. court chief
Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Bernette Johnson says her colleagues don't have the authority to decide who is entitled to become the court's next chief justice. Addressing a panel of state lawmakers today in New Orleans, Johnson says that she rejected a compromise that would have forced her to wait until 2017 to become chief justice. Johnson says Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball suggested to her that two other justices, Jeffrey Victory and Jeannette Knoll, should serve as chief justice and serve out their terms before Johnson took the position. Johnson has sued to block her colleagues from debating and voting on whether she or Victory qualifies as the longest-serving justice once Kimball retires next year. The debate hinges on whether Johnson's first few years on the court count toward her seniority.
Status conference set for La. justice's suit today
A federal judge has scheduled a status conference to discuss a Louisiana Supreme Court justice's bid to block her colleagues from debating and voting on whether she is entitled to become the court's next chief justice. U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan scheduled this afternoon's conference at the request of attorneys for Justice Bernette Johnson. The meeting is closed to the public. Johnson filed suit earlier this month after Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball set a July 31 deadline for the justices to weigh in with briefs on which colleague is the "oldest in point of service" under the terms of the Louisiana Constitution. Johnson and Justice Jeffrey Victory both stake claims to being the court's longest-serving justice and thus the rightful successor to Kimball, who retires next year.