PART 7: JUDGE PARK SERIES: WILL JAKMIDES GET PARK REVERSED AGAIN?

On August 18, 2014, the Fifth District Court of Appeals:

• on the appeal of Alliance attorney Jeff Jakmides (filed on behalf of one Barbara Lockheart)
  
• that Judge Dixie Park of the Stark County Probate Court had violated the Constitutional (due process of law) rights of Lockheart which resulted in her spending some 10 harrowing days
• in the Stark County jail

It could be that Jakmides may once again be on a track to have the Fifth District find that Judge Park has violated the due process of law rights of yet another Stark Countian.

On February 26th, Jakmides filed an appeal with the court from Judge Park rulings in the case In re:  ... Frank K. Bolog:

As a matter of formal legal pleadings, the appeal asserts that Judge Park:

In layman's language, the pleading asserts that Judge Park:

1. Violated Ohio law in acting to appoint a guardian for putative ward Frank K. Bolog without having found that as a matter of law on the basis of clear and convincing evidence that Bolog is mentally impaired,
2. Violated Ohio law in appointing an guardian for Bolog's personal/property interest decision making authority of a person (John R. Frank, appointed February 4, 2014) who never made a required Ohio Supreme Court prescribed application, and consequently:
3. Bolog was denied his U.S. Constitutional rights of due process of law (notice and opportunity to be heard) rights.

If Jakmides is successful, Bolog will be the fourth in a string of cases within a year in which Park was either reversed on constitutional grounds (In re:  Finan and In re: Flohr) or remanded (by the Ohio Supreme Court) on the illegal issuance by a probate court judge of a search warrant.

The Report will not repeat the volumes that have already been written in this current series (who knows how long this is going to go on?), but here are links for those SCPR readers are not familiar with the details of what has gone on before:

• September 22, 2014, 
• September 23, 2014,
• September 25, 2014, 
• September 29, 2014,
• January 14, 2015,
• February 19, 2015

The question that the SCPR raises is this:  When is enough enough?

In several blogs of this series, The Report has said that Judge Park is obviously in over her head in terms of knowledge of the law or in judicial demeanor and should at her own initiative resign.

Of course, that is not going to happen.

The SCPR has learned that among Stark County judicial/legal establishment, Judge Park has very low regard in terms of her legal acumen.

However, elected official colleagues and lawyers who appear before her will talk "privately" with one another in derogation of her legal abilities, but none apparently have the courage to go face-to-face with Judge Park and join the SCPR in asking her to resign.

Currently, there is a trial going on in Cleveland involving Cleveland Municipal Court judge Angela Stokes (currently barred from hearing criminal cases) on whether or not Judge Stokes should lose her law license and therefore the ability to be an Ohio judge:

Excerpts from a February 26th Cleveland Plain Dealer piece on the trial:

The Ohio Supreme Court's Board of Professional Conduct appointed a three-member panel to hear the case, which is unfolding like a trial in a makeshift courtroom in the offices of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.

Joseph Caligiuri, the lead lawyer for the disciplinary counsel, described Stokes' treatment of people appearing in her courtroom as "downright despicable" and said that she led a "reign of terror" that disrupted the entire court. He said people who enter her courtroom walk into a "different universe."

Among the allegations made by local lawyers and others against Judge Park in addition to the higher court reversals/remands as linked to above, include charges that she favors certain lawyers over others and has had a difficult relationship with court employees.

Local attorney Craig T. Conley has made "no bones about it," he wants Park gone and gone yesterday.

While ethical rules will not allow lawyers who have filed disciplinary complaints to make having done so public, the SCPR has reason to believe that complaints have been filed against Judge Park.

Should any of "thought-to-have-been-filed" complaints mature into charges being filed by Disciplinary Counsel against Park, the SCPR thinks Stark Countians can expect a similar scene that is going on in Cleveland to materialize in Stark County.

It hasn't been that long since there was a resolution of difficulties that came out of troubles that plagued the Stark County treasurer's office during the period April 1, 2009 through the end of October, 2011.

And, of course, there is the George T. Maier qualifying to be sheriff saga that dragged out from February 5, 2013 through the November election of 2014. 

Could it be that Stark County will once again be the focus of all Ohio as the Judge Dixie Park saga unfolds?