Ruling in the Marie Long Case

A probate commissioner acted unethically and she violated the rules, but she did nothing wrong in the case of the old lady who went into probate court worth $1.3 million and five years later was penniless, according to a ruling released Monday morning.

Based on a quick read of the 11-page ruling, Marie Long lost the overall question of whether she was treated fairly during her five-year foray through Maricopa County Superior Court's probate division. But she won a new trial on the most outrageous of issues: the $233,000 charged by attorney Brenda Church and her firm, Frazer, Ryan, Goldberg & Arnold, for 11 months of work last year.

In all, Superior Court Judge Robert Budoff found that Commissioner Lindsay Ellis violated the Code of Judicial Conduct of the Arizona Supreme Court when she e-mailed a draft copy of her ruling in the Long case only to certain attorneys – the ones who wound up with (or their clients wound up with) much of her cash. But that “ex-parte communication”, while inappropriate, isn’t enough to show that Ellis was biased, he wrote.

“The ex parte communication occurred after the trial and after the ruling had actually been prepared, and the only change that had occurred as a result of the improper ex parte communication was immaterial to the substance of the ruling itself,” he wrote. “The fact that the lawyers who were in receipt of the ex parte communication did not disclose it for two months, and the fact that the judge never disclosed it, apparently, until after it was brought to the attention of other judicial officers, after the fact, is inconsequential to the substance of the ruling itself regardless of whether or not counsel and the Judge may have violated any of their ethical obligations.”

Budoff found that the other ex parte communications “were only related to scheduling issues and are inconsequential.”

Overall, Budoff found there was no evidence that Ellis was biased and that she properly approved hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees charged by the Sun Valley Group. He dismissed complaints that Sun Valley was self dealing by both acting as guardian and providing care because the guardian ad litem, Brian Theut, and Long’s court-appointed attorney, Jon Kitchel, “arguably acceded” to Sun Valley providing care while Marie was still living at home. Apparently, the Supreme Court rules prohibiting such conduct don’t matter. The judge never even mentioned them.

Full Article and Source:
Judge: Probate Judge Acted Unethically but She Wasn't Biased Against Old Lady