Florida Judge Craig DeThomasis, who has earned the nickname “Judge Grudge” online, has been booted off a high-profile case against YouTuber Jeremy Hales of "What the Hales" fame. The appellate court in Florida found cause to remove DeThomasis for bias after he removed Hales’ Constitutional rights, including his right to protect himself with guns for almost a year without having an evidentiary hearing where Hales could have proved he was the victim of a false claim.
Hales, who runs a YouTube channel with over 700,000 subscribers and makes videos of treasure hunting in storage units, was hit with a retaliatory protective order by his neighbor Lynette Preston after Hales got a protective order against her and her live-in companion, John Cook, for stalking and harassment in Ohio.
While the judge in Ohio saw the pair as a clear threat to the Hales’ safety, DeThomasis refused to uphold the Ohio order or hear Hales’ evidence and spent 11 months listening to Preston’s complaints, allowing her to dodge her deposition and give false information to the court. DeThomasis berated Hales and his lawyers mercilessly in several hearings and refused to remove the temporary restraining order that barred Hales from driving on the road that led to his property while Preston delayed the case for months. You can read the details of the case here.
Among other indignities, DeThomasis often spoke over Hales' counsel, refused to let Hales present his case; threatened his lawyers with contempt and accused them of misleading the court; gave Preston, who was self-represented for a time, legal advice; argued on behalf of Preston; wasted the litigants' time repeating the entire case history multiple times for no reason; blamed Hales for the constant delays in the case when all but one was caused by Preston and the judge; and attempted to make new case law to take away Hales' first amendment right to report on his case publicly using a novel "cyberbullying" law that didn't apply to Hales.
It was truly a sight to behold. You can watch my coverage of those hearings on a YouTube playlist here.
Hales’ attorneys, Randy Shochet and Doreen Inkeles, wrote three motions to recuse DeThomasis for bias that he denied vociferously, even going so far as to refute their arguments with verbose multi-page orders. Finally, Hales’ attorneys wrote a writ of prohibition and sent it to the First District Court of Appeals to review DeThomasis’s actions in the case and ask the higher court to remove him.
And remove him they did.
Finally, after months of waiting, the appellate court removed DeThomasis for illegal and biased judicial actions, writing, “This court grants Hales’s request and issues the writ, finding that he has demonstrated a sufficient basis for disqualification in possibly his second, but certainly his third, motion.”
The Court explained that a writ of prohibition is necessary to “restrain the unlawful exercise of judicial functions when no other adequate remedy is afforded by law.”
DeThomasis is a bad judge, and he should be removed from the bench entirely after his actions in this case. There could be complaints coming soon to the judicial oversight board as Hales is not the only litigant in DeThomasis’ court who has been treated terribly because of personal grudges the judge holds. In the coming weeks, I’ll be covering another case, Gosney v. Griffith, where DeThomasis behaved equally aggressively toward Shochet, who was also the lawyer in that case. A judge who takes out his dislike of an attorney on his clients should not be a judge.
Hales told PJ Media that he is relieved after the ruling and hopes to get his rights back in front of a fair judge. "While we rejoice in this personal victory, we are deeply saddened that the average man and woman would not be able to afford the $100,000 plus in legal fees to achieve justice in our country," said Hales. "We agonize over how many lives Judge Craig DeThomasis has already destroyed because they couldn't afford to fight his blatant corruption. He must be removed permanently from the bench." Hales will have to go in front of a new judge assigned to the case and start all over again.
DeThomasis has been added to my wall of recusals, resignations, and removals that I’ve been keeping over the years when bad judges, attorneys, and guardians ad litem resign in disgrace or are removed in cases I cover. You can see a compilation of Judge Grudge’s bad behavior and legal opinions on it in the montage below. Good riddance.
Petition for Writ of Prohibition—Original Jurisdiction by PJ Media on Scribd
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