Battle Heats Up in Judge vs. Attorney General Row over Collection Agency Case

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

When we last left our irascible duo, Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch was trying to get Ramsey County Judge William H. Leary III thrown off a couple of court cases Hatch had filed against collection agencies while Judge Leary was charging Hatch with making a threatening phone call while mediation was still underway.

Sure, it?s no ?Mary Worth gets a stalker,? but let?s check in and see what those two crazy kids are up to these days.

Still feuding, apparently, according to a story running in the Pioneer Press.

It all started back when Hatch filed lawsuits back. in 2004, one against JBC & Associates and its related law firm; the other against Minneapolis-based law firm Messerli & Kramer. Both suits alleged FDCPA violations. Judge Leary, who had been assigned to the cases, wasn?t necessarily handing down the law as Hatch saw fit, and it looked unlikely that the judge would mete out justice against the collection agencies cited. So, as the story goes, Hatch called Judge Leary and tried to convince him to see things Hatch?s way.

Hatch isn?t denying that he called Judge Leary. Hatch has stated repeatedly that he thought that the mediation process was still on, and that the call he made was within the legal boundaries and lasted ?a minute or less.?

Judge Leary, though, has registered a ?hold up there, hoss? and is challenging Hatch?s account of said telephone call. Citing county phone records and a letter from Hatch’s top assistant, Judge Leary issued an order Tuesday contesting the attorney general’s claim that he had made only a perfunctory phone call to the judge about the lawsuit.

Exhibit A is a record of the call made from Hatch?s cell phone to Leary?s chambers lasting a little more than the aforementioned ?minute or less.? Records actually show that the call lasted more than seven minutes. “I don’t recall if it was one minute or seven minutes,” Hatch told the Pioneer Press. But he feels that now the record bolsters his argument that the conversation with Judge Leary wasn?t improper. “If [Leary] thought there was something wrong with his conversation, he should have terminated it,” Hatch said. “He would have had time to do so.”

What had started out as a case against two collection agencies for FDCPA violations has become instead a personally political affair between the Attorney General and the judge. Leary held a hearing on Hatch’s call ? which the judge alleges contained a threat of adverse media attention — earlier this summer, because it was outside of normal court proceedings, a status legally termed “ex parte.”

“If the judge’s statement is true that the ex parte communication involved a threat of adverse media attention, the threat… more seriously undermines the impartiality of the court,” Hamilton wrote recently in an e-mail response to motions in the case. “If the threat of media attention is also false, a false statement of fact to a judge is specifically prohibited by the ethics rules.”

Things continue to be up in the air, as far as if Judge Leary will be removed from the collection agency court case as well as if Hatch?s call to the judge were ethical and appropriate. What is not at all contested is that Mary Worth?s stalker? Looks like Captain Kangaroo.