Folks may recall– I mentioned it this week– that the only person I’ve banned in comments was a lawyer in New Orleans, who I banned for persistently making racist quotes after repeated warnings.
My banning of him isn’t a patch on what the federal district court has done for him:
On Sept. 11, U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance, speaking for all of the district’s judges, agreed to amend the ban on O’Dwyer’s access to the court building by allowing him to file appeal notices by mail.
This and the rest of the story certainly makes one wonder what Mr.O’Dwyer has been up to:
A disbarred New Orleans lawyer is attempting to appeal a $20 million settlement agreement involving federal class-action lawsuits that claimed sloppy work by the Orleans, Lake Borgne Basin and East Jefferson levee districts contributed to levee breaches during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
But whether Ashton O’Dwyer succeeds in getting U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval, who is overseeing the trial, or the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to consider his complaints is anything but clear.
O’Dwyer contends that the plaintiffs’ attorneys who entered into the settlement agreement have conspired with Duval in blocking his attempts to make the state of Louisiana and its subsidiaries — the levee districts and their boards of directors — pay a much larger share of the damages that his clients incurred during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Duval and the attorneys have denied those claims.
In his appeal, and in a separate lawsuit against Duval that was dismissed within days of being filed last year, O’Dwyer claims that Duval took actions as a judge to remove him from participation in the multiple Katrina class-action lawsuits, despite his filing the first damage suit in federal court only days after the storm.
O’Dwyer’s reportedly aggressive and often verbally abusive attacks on Duval and on U.S. District Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle, involving a separate lawsuit, combined with his failure to pay penalties levied as a result of contempt citations, have already gotten him disbarred in federal court.
O’Dwyer also has been indefinitely suspended from practicing law in state court by the Louisiana Supreme Court, according to a March 30 order by that court.
And when, in late July, he passed a note to Lemelle containing “profanity and an outrageous racial slur directed at Judge Lemelle, along with an invitation that if Judge Lemelle wanted to do anything about this, ‘you know where I live, ‘ ” according to a court ruling, he was banned from entering the federal courthouse at 500 Camp Poydras St., except when U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Jerry Brown certified that O’Dwyer’s presence was needed for proceedings in his own bankruptcy case.
O’Dwyer’s filing speaks for itself. The fact is the man appears to be emotionally unstable.
http://abovethelaw.com/O%27Dwyer%20Response%20to%20Contempt%20Order.pdf
AROD? Unstable? Surely, you jest?
He was always so polite and civil on this blog. I never could understand why he was banned.
(Note to the uninformed: The above is irony. AROD has issues, in my opinion.)
(Note to the informed: Some people have issues, and some of us have “inner demons”. Blllllllllttttttt, AROD. Those of us with “inner demons” are still here on the blog. Where are the folks with “issues”.)
I hope he gets some help.
No way. Sounds like he’d be a lot less fun if he got help.
Well, yes, when I find myself ensnared in an “unfruitful conversation,” I always find that “Screw you!” is the appropriate way in which to draw it to a close.
… AROD tried that “here’s where I live, come get me” line on this blog at least once, IIRC.
Lined college notebook paper……impressive! I bet he uses salmon-colored index cards in court. Well, back when he was allowed in court.
I think this has been mentioned on this site before, but AROD was notorious after Katrina for holing up in his St. Charles Ave. mansion with a shotgun and daring people to break into his house.
Re: the notebook paper, if I were arguing my “impecuniousness,” I might use notebook paper too.
Poor Ashton. He wasn’t always nuts. He was once an excellent lawyer.
i don’t think electric shock therapy will even help the crazy fool.
Having once been married to a brilliant, successful lawyer who gave it all up for the bottle and Trixie, I am sad to say, it doesn’t appear AROD has hit rock bottom just yet, but it is certainly looming. He will never admit he needs help because in his mind, he isn’t the one that’s crazy. There is no reasoning with someone so far gone. Perhaps the best thing to happen to him would be for the judge to lock him up for awhile.
Tightlip: The world is fulla bottles and Trixies … finish one, open another, until you can’t anymore. Arod could be a good subject for a novel, in the hands of the proper writer, but that’s about it. He’s just sucking up good air and exhaling poison. I don’t know that there’s much a third person can do to change his problems. Here in Mississippi, he could be civilly committed to the state hospital, Whitfield–the name alone is sufficiently foreboding–but they’d just give him some drugs, which he will quit taking as soon as he’s free, and maybe hit him with the jumper cables.
Arods are to be pitied … out of self-control and beyond reach. And he could just go postal. We haven’t heard the last of him, but at least we’ve heard the last from him.
I can’t help but feel sorry for him… There are a lot of people here in New Orleans that have the lingering scars from Katrina, both black and white. Unfortunately Katrina only made worse the long history of racial division that exists in the crescent city. There was an old black man that slept each night in a truck on my street (in Uptown of all places) until earlier this summer when he was finally forced out. He didn’t want to leave his childhood home/neighborhood, he was a good guy with a decent heart, but at times was prone to some bad habits, and distrusted all white people, even those trying to help him.
I posted the following in comments to the article, and would like to post it here.
Last year, Ashton brought a motion to disqualify the class counsel in the Katrina litigation because he perceived they had a conflict. The class counsel were representing the Road Home Program in addition to home owners whose claims against the insurance company defendants would be subrogated to the Road Home Program. Ashton brought out the issue of political patronage deals between private lawyers and the Louisiana Attorney General. All of these attorneys made significant campaign contributions to Foti and his successor.
Well, his motion never gained traction or attention with the court. But, recognizing Ashton may be on to something, State Farm brought an idenitcal motion that also raised the issue of possible illegal contracts between the class counsel and the Louisiana Attorney Gerenral’s office allowing the class counsel to represent the state of Louisiana as private counsel. They introduced as evidence “engagement letters” issued by Foti to these attorneys for this purpose.
Long story short, Ashton was right about the contracts with the AG. None of the “engagement letters” (a/k/a contracts) had ever been approved by the Divison of Administration. After being given the opportunity by the court to demonstrate that the contracts were legit, the AG eventually terminated these lawyers as counsel for the Road Home Program.
There’s much more to this issue than I’ve written here. But, the bottom line is: regardless of his improper and offensive tactics and name-calling, Ashton O’Dwyer was right.
NAAS-genius and insanity often go hand in hand in the same person. And without any scientific data I would say that coexistence of genius and insanity in the same individual is rife in the MS Delta and NOLA and always has been so
Sounds like Mr. Ashton is a “siren in the night” trying to help real people in New Orleans…do most lawyers in Mississippi realize the Dickie Scruggs prosecution cases are not understood as to be litigation concerning lawyers’fees?
The majority of “scanning the newspapers” and news websites folks think his criminal actions are felonies, not in-fighting within the legal community.
Except even lawyers have rights, it’s complicated!
MGNALT wrote “The majority of “scanning the newspapers” and news websites folks think his criminal actions are felonies, not in-fighting within the legal community.”
The majority of people scanning newspapers and websites have it right, then: Scruggs’s criminal actions were felonies, not infighting within the legal community.
Do you think bribery of judges only matters to lawyers? Or that bribery of judges in cases involving legal fees is not as bad as bribery in other cases?
The judges in Mississippi that have been bribed in the past 3 years have dealt with cases over lawyers’fees. It’s sad that the judges have to police some lawyers.
The lawyers on your website/blog including you NMC have the ethics/ability and smarts to be our Judges in Mississippi.
You are tho’ looking after your clients and defending their rights which is what the general population of a small rural State needs.
He and John Boehner must use the same extra-strength tanning bulbs.
That’s I think the third case I’ve run across of a lawyer just going around the bend. The thing that is terrifying is that the crazier they get, the less they can comprehend that they are the crazy ones. I really hope Mr. O’Dwyer gets help.