In Re Carole H. Squire

• Decision Date: 14 September 2010
• Docket Number: No. 08-4401.,08-4401.
• Citation: 617 F.3d 461
• Parties: In re Carole H. SQUIRE, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

617 F.3d 461

In re Carole H. SQUIRE, Appellant.

No. 08-4401.

United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit.

Aug. 3, 2010.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Sept. 14, 2010.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

ON BRIEF: Percy Squire, Law Office, Columbus, Ohio, for Appellant.

Before: MARTIN, CLAY, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Circuit Judge.

Carole H. Squire, a former judge on the Franklin County Domestic Relations and Juvenile Court, appeals an order of disbarment entered against her by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Following an investigation, Squire was suspended from the practice of law by the state of Ohio for two years, with twelve months of that suspension stayed on the condition that she commit no further disciplinary violations within the suspension period. Shortly thereafter, the district court reciprocally disbarred Squire from practicing in federal court.

Squire claims that she should not have been reciprocally disbarred because she was denied due process during her state disbarment proceeding when Ohio refused to reveal to Squire the names of every witness with whom the Ohio disciplinary counsel for the Supreme Court of Ohio, Jonathan Coughlan, spoke during the investigation. She further alleges that the findings of the Ohio Supreme Court are against the weight of the evidence presented and that her investigation was nothing more than the product of political machinations between members of the Ohio Supreme Court and the Franklin County Domestic Relations and Juvenile Court.¹

However, failing to disclose to Squire the names of every person with whom Coughlan may have spoken during his investigation did not deprive Squire of her opportunity to present a meaningful defense. Moreover, there is not such an infirmity of proof establishing her misconduct as to give rise to a clear conviction that we cannot accept as final the conclusion of the Ohio Supreme Court. Therefore, we AFFIRM the district court's imposition of reciprocal discipline.

I.²

Squire was elected for a six-year term on the Franklin County Domestic Relations and Juvenile Court in Columbus, Ohio and began her term in January 2001. On August 27, 2004, Squire sent a letter to Judge Thomas Moyer, then-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, alleging, among other things, that other judges on the court were interfering with Squire's cases and failing to perform their jobs adequately. It is unclear from the record whether Chief Judge Moyer responded or took any action as a result of receiving Squire's letter, although Squire claims that Chief Judge Moyer did nothing.

Some time after that, Lori McCaughan, a lawyer arguing a case before Squire, consulted Judge James Mason, another judge on the Franklin County Domestic Relations and Juvenile Court, about the case. McCaughan complained that: (1) Squire repeatedly refused to hold a hearing in connection with an ex parte civil protection order, as required by Ohio law; (2) Squire refused to accept service of an emergency custody order issued by a fellow judge, Judge Dana Preisse; (3) Squire had sequestered a child involved in a custody dispute in her chambers; (4) Squire refused to accept service of McCaughan's affidavit of disqualification disqualifying Squire from McCaughan's case; and (5) Squire had behaved inappropriately towards attorneys and their clients who appeared in Squire's courtroom.

Sometime prior to October 5, 2005, Coughlan notified Squire that she was under investigation for allegedly violating the Canons of Judicial Ethics and sent her a draft complaint. According to Coughlan, the draft complaint contained the names of all persons who had filed a grievance and the names of all potential witnesses in the formal proceeding against Squire. However, Coughlan did not provide the names of every person with whom he had spoken during the course of conducting his investigation. Squire demanded that Coughlan provide the names of every complainant, but Coughlan responded that Squire had been provided with all of the complainants' names. He further asserted that no particular person filed a grievance for one of the two counts charged, as the facts underlying that claim came to his attention during the course of his investigation. A probable cause hearing was set for October 7 before a three-member panel of the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline.

On October 5, Squire filed suit against Coughlan in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, alleging that Coughlan had violated her due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and denied her a meaningful opportunity to respond to the draft complaint by not providing her the names of all the complainants and witnesses against her. Squire requested a temporary restraining order to prohibit Coughlan from proceeding with the hearing and a preliminary and permanent injunction requiring Coughlan to provide the requested names and attorney's fees. The district court dismissed the case sua sponte for lack of jurisdiction, finding that it was barred under the Younger abstention doctrine from considering Squire's federal case because Squire's state disciplinary proceedings were ongoing. See Squire, 469 F.3d at 555.

Squire filed a second complaint with the district court on October 6 that was identical to her first complaint, adding an additional defendant, Lori J. Brown, the assistant disciplinary counsel. Because the Board's probable cause hearing was set for October 7, the district court held an evidentiary hearing on the evening of October 6 and again dismissed the complaint for lack of jurisdiction under Younger. Id. The district court further found that, even if it had jurisdiction, Squire's claim would fail on the merits. Id. Squire then filed a motion with the Board to obtain the names of everyone with whom Coughlan had spoken during the investigation against her, alleging that due process entitled her to know the identity of all witnesses against her and the opportunity to avoid public disclosure of sensitive facts. The Board denied her request.

On October 10, Coughlan made public the formal complaint against Squire, based upon two cases heard by Squire Allison v. Patterson and Camburn v. Camburn. This complaint presented claims that, in both cases, Squire: (1) repeatedly refused to hold a hearing in connection with an ex parte civil protection order as required by Ohio law; (2) was discourteous to attorneys; (3) had improper ex parte communications; and (4) failed to disqualify herself when appropriate. Coughlan amended the complaint on March 3, 2006 to include two additional counts rising from two other cases heard by Squire Fleming v. Fleming and In re Tylee Delibro. The additional counts claimed that Squire: (1) made false and inflammatory statements in her entry to disqualify herself from the Fleming case; (2) did not follow statutory procedural requirements; (3) had improper ex parte communications; (4) was discourteous to attorneys; (5) wrongly disqualified herself from a case when it was not appropriate; and (6) refused to consider all matters before her in relation to a motion for continuance. In total, the amended complaint listed four counts of misconduct involving forty violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct and twelve violations of the Code of Professional Responsibility.

A three-member panel of the Board heard the case over eight days of proceedings in August, September, and October 2006. Twenty-eight witnesses testified, and the parties presented more than one hundred exhibits. The panel made unanimous findings of misconduct on all counts and recommended that Squire be suspended from the practice of law for twelve months, with six months stayed on the condition that she commit no further disciplinary infractions within the one-year suspension period. The Board accepted the panel's findings and recommended that Squire be suspended from law practice for two years, with one year of her suspension stayed.

On November 15, 2007, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, in accordance with Rule II of the Model Federal Rules of Disciplinary Enforcement, entered an order that Squire show cause why the district court should not impose identical discipline upon her. Thereafter, the district court suspended Squire from the practice of law in that court for two years with twelve months of the suspension stayed on the condition that she commit no further disciplinary violations during the suspension period. Squire timely appealed.

II.

On appeal, Squire challenges the sufficiency of the due process protections she was afforded in her state disbarment proceedings. We are “precluded by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine from reviewing any claims that challenge the sufficiency of the proceedings afforded [Squire] by the State of Ohio, as opposed to the process afforded [Squire] in her federal disbarment proceedings.” In re Cook, 551 F.3d 542, 547 (6th Cir.2009) (holding that the Rooker-Feldman precluded an attorney from challenging the Supreme Court of Ohio's disbarment proceeding). “The pertinent question in determining whether a federal district court is precluded under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine from exercising subject-matter jurisdiction over a claim ‘is whether the source of the injury upon which plaintiff bases his federal claim is the state court judgment.’ ” Id. at 548 (quoting Lawrence v. Welch, 531 F.3d 364, 368 (6th Cir.2008)). “This is true regardless of whether the party challenges the validity of the state court judgment on constitutional grounds.” Id. (citing Lawrence, 531 F.3d at 369).

Although we do not directly review Ohio's decision to disbar Squire, “because the district court relied on the record developed by the state courts, this Court must consider whether alleged defects in those proceedings ‘so infected the federal proceeding that justice requires reversal of the federal determination.’ ...