Suspension recommended for judge

BATON ROUGE (AP) — A judge in West Baton Rouge Parish should be suspended 30 days for taking a free trip from a lawyer whose client got a $1.2 million settlement in a lawsuit he heard, The Louisiana Judiciary Commission says.
The Louisiana Supreme Court has scheduled a disciplinary hearing Oct. 13 for 18th District Judge J. Robin Free.
The commission said Free also failed to step aside from a class-action suit in which his mother had a potential interest, and should have to pay $6,000 to the commission.
Free did not return calls Thursday for comment; his attorney, Steven Scheckman, was out of town and could not be reached.
In court documents, Free expressed regrets for mishandling the 2009 class-action lawsuit and said it was improper for him to accept the trip to Texas in the 2010 personal injury case.
The commission has cited Free for misconduct before but handled those incidents privately, court records show.
Free was unopposed for re-election this year to the 18th District, which also covers Pointe Coupee and Iberville parishes.
Court records show that he took an all-expense paid three-day trip in April 2010 to a Texas hunting ranch owned by an attorney who worked on the personal injury case with Assistant District Attorney Tony Clayton. Clayton was thinking about buying the property and asked Free to go with him, according to the records. They went shortly after the $1.2 million settlement was delivered in Free’s court on March 24, 2010.
The commission’s investigators believed Clayton invited Free during the settlement talks.
In early hearings, Free said he merely went with Clayton as a friend. He later acknowledged it was improper.
“Tony Clayton probably described it the best and — that it was just some friends going to look at some property together and boiling crawfish and hanging out,” court files quote Free. “But looking back through this process of going through this where it says you should not receive a benefit . I realize that’s a violation.”
The commission said Free did not know that his mother was part of the class-action case when it was assigned to him, but should have stepped aside when Dow Chemical Co. lawyers pointed it out to him.
Instead, according to court documents, Free told a Dow’s attorney that the request was a “cheap shot,” and that he suspected the company of an “improper motive.”
Free should instead have scheduled a status conference with both parties, the commission said.
Court documents show that Free told the commission he has changed his policy: “I will never return another phone call to any lawyer, any potential party.”