A Mobile County circuit judge entered a $1.2 million judgment against a sitting circuit judge from Clarke County, the latest and by far the costliest turn in a controversy that had trailed the jurist from private practice onto the bench.
Mobile County Circuit Judge John Lockett ruled against Circuit Judge Stuart C. Dubose of the state’s First Judicial Circuit in a legal malpractice suit over Dubose’s handling of a will and a large estate during his years as a lawyer in Jackson.
The will, the estate and the fee
The case began with a will that Dubose drafted without ever meeting the man who signed it.
Cheryl Weaver, a longtime friend and caregiver to the ailing Joseph J. Sullivan, approached Dubose about preparing a will. Dubose wrote it, never conferring with Sullivan about its terms. Weaver took the document to Sullivan, who signed it and died not long afterward. Weaver was the sole beneficiary of an estate valued at roughly $2.5 million.
Meeting with Dubose again, Weaver agreed that the lawyer would receive a percentage of the estate’s value as his fee if the will and estate were contested. They were. Sullivan’s relatives objected first; those grievances were settled out of court. Then Dubose and Weaver, by that point co-executors, fell out with each other. The case moved from Washington County to Mobile County.
Before it reached trial in October 2006, Lockett determined that a $1.2 million legal fee — roughly 40 percent of the estate — was “reasonable and necessary,” and allowed Dubose to continue as executor. The parties then announced a confidential settlement on the courthouse steps, reading its terms into the record on the day trial was to begin.
Ten months later, Lockett found, the settlement had not been carried out.
‘The matter is not resolved’
“The court will not recite the troubled history that gets us to this point,” Lockett wrote. “Suffice it to say that on Oct. 2, 2006, on the date this matter was set for trial, the parties announced they had reached a settlement of their disputes and read into the record a settlement agreement. Now, 10 months later, the matter is not resolved.”
Dubose was “in derogation of the settlement agreement,” the judge held. An attempt by Dubose earlier that month to satisfy the agreement “purports to split the real property” but ran contrary to its terms and was “due to be set aside.”
Lockett entered judgment of $1.19 million against the Sullivan estate and against “Stuart Dubose, individually, jointly and severally,” and imposed a lien on property that was to be conveyed to Weaver — roughly 240 acres surrounding the house where Weaver lived, including all minerals; 309 acres in two sections, including minerals; and 56 acres known as the Pringle Property. He gave Dubose 30 days to transfer ownership and directed him to ensure the conveyances were free of any Internal Revenue Service lien, noting that under the settlement, “Stuart is responsible for the IRS.”
Court records suggested federal estate tax questions could yet shrink the estate significantly, reducing what would be available to attorneys and beneficiaries alike.
A judge already under scrutiny
The judgment landed on a judge whose path to the bench had itself been contested. Dubose won the Democratic nomination for the First Judicial Circuit in June 2006, beating Jackson attorney Chris Bailey by fewer than 100 votes out of some 19,000 cast across the three-county circuit. Nearly the entire local legal community lined up against him — an apparent miscalculation, as much of the electorate rallied to a candidate the lawyers so uniformly disliked. In Clarke, Washington and Choctaw counties at the time, the Democratic nomination was tantamount to election, and Republicans fielded no candidate at all.
An anonymous complaint to the Alabama State Bar over his conduct in the Sullivan estate nearly derailed him. The bar accepted a “conditional guilty plea” that would have suspended his law license for 45 days beginning the day after the general election — an arrangement that neatly preserved his license both on Election Day and on the day he would take office. The Alabama Supreme Court, which reviews all bar discipline, rejected the deal, with eight of nine justices finding the penalty too lenient. The matter went back to the bar’s disciplinary committee, where it remained pending, according to Tony McLain, the bar’s general counsel.
The situation raised questions with no settled answers: whether the bar can discipline a sitting judge for acts committed as a private attorney, and whether the Judicial Inquiry Commission has jurisdiction over conduct predating the bench. In the meantime, Dubose took the oath and assumed his duties.
His early tenure drew notice in Clarke County for an unusual concern with courtroom security — he asked the county commission to fund a guard to keep electronic devices out of his courtroom, saying cell phones and laptops “are used to make and detonate bombs, and I don’t intend for that to happen in my courtroom” — and for reports that he occasionally appeared in public outside the courthouse in his judicial robes. He was also suing La-Z-Boy, contending he was injured and greatly disabled while trying to sit in a faulty recliner.
Parties and attorneys in the estate case were constrained from speaking because of the settlement’s confidentiality provisions. A message left with Dubose’s office in Clarke County was not immediately returned. Weaver was represented by Pete Burns of Burns, Cunningham and Mackey in Mobile and Topie Cassady of Cassady & Cassady, with offices in Fairhope and Evergreen.
Dubose was later removed from the bench by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary and, in subsequent years, faced federal charges arising from his conduct.