Washington Supreme Court issues ruling in power dispute between two Tacoma judges
The Washington Supreme Court has dismissed the petition of a Tacoma judge who argued a case was improperly removed from his court.
Municipal Court Judge David Ladenburg asked the high court to order Municipal Court Presiding Judge Drew Ann Henke to withdraw her order that consolidated a domestic-violence case in front of another judge. He argued Henke didn’t have the authority to transfer the case.
The high court said Thursday that it didn’t have jurisdiction in the dispute. To issue the order Ladenburg requested the high court first had to find Municipal Court judges are state officers, and the justices decided they aren’t.
Prior cases, Justice Mary Yu wrote for the unanimous court, “show that for the purposes of constitutional analysis, ‘state officers’ are limited to those elected officials whom the state controls through appointment, salary, and impeachment, and who, in turn, wield some state-level authority.”
Municipal court judges don’t meet that criteria, the Supreme Court found.
“We therefore dismiss Judge Ladenburg’s petition, and we need not address the parties’ contentions regarding the scope of authority conferred to presiding judges ...,” Yu wrote.
The case in question was assigned to Ladenburg in 2017 and its resolution postponed to eventually be dismissed if the defendant followed certain conditions.
The defendant later was charged with other domestic violence cases, which were assigned to different judges.
In January 2020 Ladenburg held a hearing in the initial case, found the defendant guilty and scheduled a sanctions hearing. He did so even though Henke said she planned to consolidate the cases and told him not to proceed unless all the parties agreed. The defense attorney had asked for more time.
Later Henke emailed Ladenburg that she was consolidating the cases in front of Judge Dwayne Christopher and told Ladenburg to postpone the sanctions hearing or vacate his findings because the case wasn’t properly before him.
“I am not aware of any authority that would give you authority to remove a matter from my court ...,” Ladenburg responded in part.
Then he proceeded to file his Supreme Court petition, asking for a writ of mandamus or prohibition to order Henke to withdraw her order consolidating the cases.
“While the Washington State Constitution does confer original jurisdiction to the Supreme Court to issue writs of mandamus, the plain language of our constitution limits such jurisdiction to actions against ‘state officers,’” Yu wrote in the opinion.
Justices Steven González, Charles Johnson, Susan Owens, Debra Stephens, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, Raquel Montoya-Lewis, G. Helen Whitener and Justice Pro Tempore Lisa Sutton signed the opinion. Justice Barbara Madsen didn’t participate.
