filing ethics complaints, a question and comments

a friend and some others are going to file a judicial ethics complaint regarding judge groome's conflict of interest. this is the address: Office of the State Court Administrator, 101 W. Colfax, Suite 500, Denver, CO 80202. The same address will also be used to file an ethics complaint against county attorney lee phillip for his conflict of interest. no problem there, this is how we have been able to get judges and attorneys to clean up their acts. please consider filing your own.

the question is has anyone ever filed with the Independent Ethics Commission, Complaints, 101 West Colfax Avenue, Suite 500, Denver, CO 80203 against a county commissioner who has a conflict of interest like tighe and his former and current relationship with the sheriff's dept? we have not ever pursued this one before and could use some guidance.

thank you.

here is the link to the colorado code of judicial conduct regarding judge groome. they mucked it up with revisions but if you scroll down to page 9 it shows the applicable canons 1 and 2.

http://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles ... 10/2010(09 )%20clean%20-%20original%20repealed.pdf


here is a link to the complaint form. http://www.coloradojudicialdiscipline.com/ press 'complaint form'

here's links to the rules of professional conduct for attorneys. i suspect that the conniving phillips got alma, fairplay and county commissioners to sign a consent on our behalf so this might have to go to the independent ethics commission regarding all the county commissioners?

the code does provide that he may not even give the appearance of impropriety which phillips is by representing all parties.

can anyone confirm that the head of the park county dept is related to lee phillips?

http://www.cobar.org/index.cfm/ID/384/C ... l-Conduct/

http://www.cobar.org/index.cfm/ID/20472 ... 378/CETH//

Rule 1.7 Conflict of Interest: Current Clients
RULE 1.7. CONFLICT OF INTEREST: CURRENT CLIENTS
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b), a lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation involves a concurrent conflict of interest. A concurrent conflict of interest exists if:
(1) the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client; or
(2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer's responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer.
(b) Notwithstanding the existence of a concurrent conflict of interest under paragraph (a), a lawyer may represent a client if:
(1) the lawyer reasonably believes that the lawyer will be able to provide competent and diligent representation to each affected client;
(2) the representation is not prohibited by law;
(3) the representation does not involve the assertion of a claim by one client against another client represented by the lawyer in the same litigation or other proceeding before a tribunal; and
(4) each affected client gives informed consent, confirmed in writing.

MtnTrekker:

I, for one wish we could get everyone supporting one issue at a time, rather than shotgunning our efforts. Which is more important to you, stopping the Comm center or trying to go after the Judge and County Attorney? I maintain that except for a recall in the 90s, no small group has ever accomplished its goals because it couldn't get enough support.

let me try to be as tactful as possible on this. i said friend and others. everybody can do whatever they chose. they just aren't going after groome and phillips who play a role in this but the county commissioners. there are many players.

i would rather not lose the support of others friends because someone is doing something and only that should be supported. perhaps some support of this effort would also prove helpful. it isn't necessarily an either/or.

this requires that each person write to a state board administrator, stating their standing - a resident of park county and their objection to a conflict of interest as they view it. in the past it has taken several because the former state admin almost always supported the judges. however when it was shown with a former judge who eventually stepped down that he violated his code of ethics because he continually made rulings that usurped his powers, it became evident tht there was an issue. this issue has presented itself with judge groome. there are some who want to address it and get the fellow to step down on his own or with assistance from the state admin.

the same with the county attorney. perhaps with new one in place, an unbiased county attorney will advise the county commissioners just how serious their conflicts of interests are and were and get them to stop.

it is my understanding that the independent ethics commission has been quite helpful in getting people like commissioner tighe to see his conflict of interest when he hasn't been able to. i, and others, would like to know more about the commission.

thank you for what you are doing. i would like to know more about what you have learned. perhaps more information, since others are reading but not necessarily posting, will convince more to participate in your endeavors, but let's not treat this like it is the only game in town and be respectful of what others are trying to do as well.

What conflict of interest? I am not going to go searcing through old thread to try and find what you're talking about, so this is pointless without a little background.

good point towermonkey. i have talked about it so much to so many people that i forget that when using threads they need to be updated.

tighe's conflict of interest is his being a former and current employee of sheriff wegener and not recusing himself when it comes to making decisions like the communication center which was part of the sheriff's dept previously. it is my understanding that taking money for work done and then trying to make unbiased decisions about the sheriff's dept has been cause for the independent ethics commission.

conflict of interest for judge groome is his former association as county attorney for the county commissioners. judge groome needed to bring the issue forward and to recuse himself because he can not be unbiased. it falls within the canons of ethics for judges and has been cause previously for ethics violations.

conflict of interest for county attorney phillips stems from his representation of the towns of alma and fairplay besides counseling the park county commissioners all at the same time. phillips is not in a position to provide unbiased counsel as his decisions for alma and fairplay can unfairly affect park county decisions and vice versa. i think that is why the commissioners initially took him on temporarily. i think when the commissioners are given notice of intent to file a complaint regarding the commissioners conflict regarding phillips, they will have to address the issues. and phillips may voluntarily with the help of the state admin office see the folly of trying to counsel many when he can not give the appearance of impropriety which could result in censure or loss of license if he continues.

Thanks for the info. I only read a few threads here and didn't want to dig too deep. I'll do a bit of research on this.

Mtntrekker, I am so happy to see all of what you have presented here. As I have said in other posts regarding letters etc to the state court administrator concerning groome would be a good thing. I do not know if something concerning phillips should go to the state court administrator since, in essence, he is not a state employee. What about the Attorney General?

I did not know there was any kind of ethics commission, but am very pleased to now know about it. I feel you have more pull going after phillips given the fact of him trying to represent 2 towns & a county. And here is a thought, maybe know one knew to do this so the ethics commission never knew what he was doing because no one reported him & asked for an investigation.

I think what these 2 guys are doing or have done is more serious & would garner an investigation before anything with Tighe. Just my opinion. Guess I am not understanding all of this, but, why would you tip off the commissioners with a notice of intent to file? Can you not simply file with this ethics commission? The judge you speak about who eventually resigned, is there something I could read where this was docummented? I would certainly like to take some time to review everything you have posted. It is very interesting to me.

One thing, I do feel on all of this you have put forth, I think it would become a greater, logical effort if anyone who is interested could somehow talk, e-mail and combine all of our thoughts. I commend you for putting this out there, but, I do agree, with nmysys, that if things are going to get done everyone as a whole should be going in some factual same direction. Individual letters are good. Maybe one filing, one letter with many names is better. I simply do not know.

all complaints regarding attorneys go through the state court administrator at the same address as for the judges. attorneys are required to follow the code of professional conduct. from experience individual letters carry more weight as each needs to be investigated and each person provides their reasons for their complaint, e.g. conflict of interest and the specific reasons. if all sign the same paper, it is considered one investigation.

all information is considered confidential and only the person who filed the complaint and received the results may disclose the information if they so chose and some have as chief judge is familiar with some regarding his judges. by writing individual letters each individual expressed their concern and it was the building of a number of complaints that made the state court admin look closer at decisions.

as for giving notice to the commissioners, one of the comments from the flume if i recall correctly, was that commissioner tighe asked why they didn't come and discuss it with him, not that it really would have made any difference. we feel that giving formal notice lets him know that there has been an official objection to his conflict of interest as it relates to the sheriff's dept. and a specific request that he recuse himself and it gives all 3 commissioners notice of our objection to the county attorney because of his conflict of interest. it gives the commissioners an opportunity to rectify the situation w/o filing an official complaint. since we haven't done an independent ethics commission complaint before we want to make sure that we exhausted all reasonable avenues. we would be interested in hearing from anyone who has.

i commend nmysys and av8or for wht they are doing. writing formal complaints regarding individual issues with the county attorney and judge groome need to be done when the problem occured, not when it is convenient for some cause. it doesn't mean that that cause can't be supported either.