A local Republican judge’s decision to throw out the State Bar of Texas’ disciplinary case against former Donald Trump lawyer Sidney Powell on flimsy technical grounds was a disservice to the public the judge serves.
Collin County state District Judge Andrea Bouressa recently granted Powell’s motion for a summary judgment largely because of filing and clerical errors bar lawyers made. Among the mistakes Bouressa found so egregious were a mislabeling of the bar’s exhibits and a failure to file a sworn affidavit attached to a motion.
What a travesty of justice. Such errors occur in court cases often. And while not excusable, they shouldn’t be a basis for a judge to throw out such a serious case without considering evidence.
The bar sued Powell last year for filing “frivolous” lawsuits against the states of Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia, in which she claimed widespread voter fraud robbed Trump of the 2020 presidential elections. None of those suits were successful and no widespread voter fraud has ever been found.
There’s no question the state bar made some careless errors in its brief asking the judge to deny Powell’s motion to dismiss the case for lack of evidence. Exhibits were clearly mislabeled and some were altogether missing.
But Bouressa’s heavy-handed ruling is concerning. First, it wasn’t rendered as part of an in-person hearing, during which the filing issues may well have been quickly resolved in open court.
Rather, her decision came after her private review of the parties’ documents. Her judgment says that she tried to contact the bar’s lawyers for clarification on their confusing exhibits, but it “responded that no corrective action was necessary.”
That’s puzzling. The court file revealed only one email exchange between Bouressa’s court coordinator and a legal assistant at the bar, and it involved only one question about one exhibit. The assistant answered the question.
We understand it’s within Bouressa’s right to rule against a party for clerical errors. But legal experts tell us that appellate courts lately have been frowning upon judges who dismiss cases based on filing mistakes rather than on actual evidence.
That’s what happened here. Eric Porterfield, associate professor at the University of North Texas Dallas College of Law and an expert in civil procedure, reviewed the judgment for us and said it’s clear that while the bar was sloppy, Bouressa’s decision wasn’t based on the merits of the case.
Instead, the regal Bouressa got hung up on what she called the “defects” of the bar’s documents. In doing so, she shut the door on the public’s right for a full hearing of the facts surrounding Powell’s outlandish conspiracy theories that threatened the peaceful transfer of the power of the presidency.
The state bar declined to talk to us about its next moves, but it should appeal Bouressa’s overly severe ruling. This case is too important for it to have ended this way.
The Dallas Morning News
