Legal Ethics

Posting Random Pictures Of Judge's Wife In Motion To Recuse Earns Pricey Benchslap

Wait, how many pages?

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Attorney Jim Zmuda owes $29,101 in fees after a failed bid to replace the judge for cause in a sprawling 829-page motion — because nothing says your motion is totally legit than doubling as a door stop — filed “at approximately 4:30 P M, before the next-day hearing to determine whether his law firm would be disqualified from representing the plaintiff.” Hey, as everyone who has ever watched a nature documentary knows, whenever you corner an animal, it’s going to come back with a lengthy emergency motion to recuse at the last possible moment.

The chief judge of the court cleared the assigned judge, Judge John McGehee, of any potential bias and returned the matter to him for potential sanctions. Suffice to say, the resulting order brought more hot fire over the course of six pages than any 800-page monstrosity ever could.

And that’s before we get to the whole part about the motion and the judge’s wife.

The crux of the original manifesto alleged some sort of financial interest between the judge’s wife and the defendant. Apparently feeling his own conjecture was too light, he decided to include numerous social media pictures of the judge’s wife in a public filing because… reasons.

Jim Zmuda’s motion to substitute Judge McGehee attached irrelevant screenshots of Judge McGehee’s wife, Judge McGehee and their family taken from a public Facebook page, and these screenshots were not at all related to this litigation, appearing to the court that it was just to prove Judge McGehee’s wife exists and is with Judge McGehee at events and at home with their family.

While a picture may be worth a thousand words, adding pictures to a hundred thousand words or so feels like overkill. It also seems dangerous and not a little bit menacing in a world where the families of judges have been horrifically attacked. Judge McGehee agreed:

Attacking the integrity of the court, placing his wife and family photographs in this case was a reckless disregard to the facts and applicable law. This motion was done for an improper purpose of delay to the court and other counsel. Attorney Zmuda owed a duty to one’s adversary and to the legal system, and he breached that duty by taking the time of the judge and the other officers of the court away from matters more in need of a resolution.

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That the eventual reply to this motion didn’t even broach the subject of the alleged connection between the judge’s wife and the defendant underscored for the court just how spurious this all was.

This ignoring of the fictitious claim in the response made it clear and obvious to the court that Jim Zmuda’s actions were done only to delay and harass.

And delay the proceedings it did. Not just for the sake of keeping Zmuda on the case, but the judge notes that the delay helped the plaintiff — a marijuana dispensary — with regard to an Illinois “marijuana recreational use license” application deadline in March 2021.

For all the mischief this caused, Judge McGehee ordered Zmuda to pay $29,101 in fees to the other parties and told the clerk to strike all the family photos from the record. The Quad Cities area of Illinois is by no means New York City and forking over $30 grand in fees for one motion is a hefty price tag.

And yet somehow I feel like this guy got off light under the circumstances.

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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