HOUSTON (AP) - A first-year Houston family law judge’s resignation has left in limbo hundreds of divorce, child support and custody cases dating back to 2012 and could cost litigants additional money to finalize them.
The Houston Chronicle (https://bit.ly/QU6alf ) reports Denise Pratt, the former judge in family court, left behind nearly 300 court orders stacked on the floor and desk of her 311th District Court.
Pratt, a Republican, resigned late last month and suspended her re-election campaign after Harris County prosecutors began investigating her dismissal of more than 600 cases without notice. At the time, she said her departure resulted from “relentless attacks” by her political opponents.
Her name will remain on the ballot in a May 27 runoff.
Harris County Administrative Judge David Farr told the newspaper many families may face additional legal costs in finalizing the cases.
Pratt’s lawyer, Terry Yates, said the staff believes the numbers are “grossly exaggerated.”
“It is kind of pitiful that people continue to beat a dead horse,” Yates wrote in an email to the newspaper.
A majority of the orders Farr said he found in Pratt’s courtroom, some nearly a year and a half old, have blue, yellow, green or pink sticky notes on top of them with Pratt’s hand-written messages that give directions, express concerns or pose questions about the terms of an agreement to which both parties had signed off.
Farr said there’s no way to know whether the issues raised in the sticky notes were addressed, or the accurate status of the orders without them, meaning lawyers will have to be called in for status hearings.
“It is random chaos that’s going to have to be dealt with case by case by case,” he said. “Every single thing I pick up makes my head hurt, it’s so problematic.”
Austin lawyer Lillian Hardwick, co-author of the “Handbook of Texas Lawyer and Judicial Ethics,” said that if allegations against Pratt leaving behind that many cases are true, she would be the highest-ranking judge to leave a “mess of this size” in recent memory.
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Information from: Houston Chronicle, https://www.houstonchronicle.com
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