{"id":2529,"date":"2014-02-07T00:36:17","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T00:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=2529"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:53:56","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:53:56","slug":"more-than-just-friends-facebook-friend-requests-from-judges-constitute-a-request-to-engage-in-improper-ex-parte-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/more-than-just-friends-facebook-friend-requests-from-judges-constitute-a-request-to-engage-in-improper-ex-parte-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"More than Just \u2018Friends\u2019: Facebook Friend Requests from Judges Constitute A Request to Engage in Improper Ex Parte Communication"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under a ruling recently passed by the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal, judges must live up to a higher standard than most in respect to their interactions.\u00a0 A simple Facebook \u2018friend\u2019 request, while innocuous among members of the non-legal public, can merit a judge\u2019s forced recusal from a case if sent from a judge to a party in a case.
\nIn Chase v. Loisel<\/a>, the court ruled to remove Judge Linda Schoonover from presiding over a divorce case during which she sent a friend request<\/a> to one of the parties involved.\u00a0 Judge Schoonover sent the friend request to the wife in the husband-wife divorce proceeding; the wife declined to answer the friend request.\u00a0 The wife later filed a formal complaint that the judge \u201cretaliated\u201d<\/a> against her for not accepting the request by giving her husband a \u201cdisproportionately excessive alimony award.\u201d The court ruled that the judge must disqualify herself because the friend request was legally sufficient to create a well-founded fear that the wife would not receive a fair trial. By sending a Facebook friend request, Schoonover was soliciting the wife to participate in improper ex parte communication.\u00a0 The court ruled that the friend request would have caused the wife to have a \u201creasonable fear of offending\u201d Schoonover for not accepting the request.<\/p>\n

A simple Facebook \u2018friend\u2019 request, while innocuous among members of the non-legal public, can merit a judge\u2019s forced recusal from a case if sent by the judge to a party in a case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the decision, the court distinguishes its reasoning from that in Domville v. State<\/a>, a Florida Fourth District Court of Appeals case.\u00a0 In Domville<\/span>, the court ruled that it was improper for a judge to engage in a Facebook \u2018friendship\u2019 with the prosecutor in a case over which the judge presided.\u00a0 The Chase<\/span> court recognized that a Facebook \u2018friendship\u2019 does not correlate with close friendship in the real world, and that \u201crequiring disqualification in such cases does not reflect the true nature of a Facebook friendship.\u201d
\nThe stark difference in consequences for a Facebook friend request among non-members of the legal profession versus judges is telling.\u00a0 Whereas in many workplaces it is common for employees to send and accept each other\u2019s Facebook friend requests, judges are held to higher standards.\u00a0 Severe consequences exist<\/a> for judges because of partiality concerns and evidentiary concerns, depending upon the intended recipient of the request.\u00a0 A request from a judge to a party in the case, asking the party to be \u2018friends\u2019 with him or her, implies an invitation towards partiality which should not be present.\u00a0 The Code of Judicial Conduct<\/a> states that judges must be impartial.\u00a0 Furthermore, the quantity of personalized content on Facebook may cause a judge to be prejudiced against one or both parties in a case, if the judge accesses the content.\u00a0 In a divorce case, for example, if the judge views a picture of one of the parties on a date or acting raucously at a party outside of the evidence offered in the courtroom, this supplemental information may cause the judge to be prejudiced against a party.
\nIssues such as these will likely grow more prevalent as social-networking media grows in popularity.\u00a0 Judges and other members of the legal community will have to place appropriate boundaries on their conduct to separate their social networking from their legal responsibilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under a ruling recently passed by the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal, judges must live up to a higher standard than most in respect to their interactions.\u00a0 A simple Facebook \u2018friend\u2019 request, while innocuous among members of the non-legal public, can merit a judge\u2019s forced recusal from a case if sent from a judge …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7509,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions\/7509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}