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"                      <p class=\"imgtitle\">Jefferson</p>           AUSTIN &ndash; Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson must decide whether to recuse a judge who didn't recuse a judge who awarded more than $200 million in a family dispute.<br /><br />If Jefferson rules that Presiding Probate Judge Guy Herman of Harris County handled a recusal motion properly, the award will stand.<br />If Jefferson recuses Herman, Probate Judge Mike Wood will have to hold a new trial.<br /><br />The turmoil would never have arisen if the nine children of the late Miguel Angel Luis Gonzalez y Vallejo had peacefully divided a fortune he built in food and beverages.<br /><br />Instead, widow Maria del Carmen Guilbot Serros de Gonzalez sued two of her sons, Carlos Gonzalez Guilbot and Miguel Angel Gonzalez Guilbot.<br /><br />The widow and most of her children claimed Carlos, Miguel and other defendants stole a huge sum from family businesses.<br /><br />Judge Wood ruled in 2006 that defendants forged stock certificates in order to claim majority interest in some of the businesses.<br /><br />Wood prohibited them from disputing ownership, and he set trial on damages.<br /><br />As he prepared for a pretrial hearing, defendants removed the case to federal court.<br /><br />Wood held the hearing anyway. The widow's lawyer, Hector Longoria, told him the defendants removed the case and he would try to get it remanded.<br /><br />Wood said he couldn't do anything. He said, \"If the order of remand comes, then I would suggest that you bring a certified copy of it and give it to the clerk of this court.\"<br /><br />A federal judge remanded the case 17 days later, ordering defendants to pay $7,500 in attorney fees because they had no reason to believe removal was proper.<br /><br />The clerk gave Longoria certified copies of the docket sheet and the remand order.<br /><br />Longoria headed for the Harris County courthouse with his copies the next morning, but defendants got there first and filed a motion to recuse Wood.<br /><br />Wood forwarded the motion to Judge Herman, who appointed Judge Gladys Burwell to hear it.<br /><br />Defendants then filed separate motions to recuse both Burwell and Herman.<br /><br />Herman held a hearing on all three motions, but the defendants didn't show up. Herman denied the motions and fined the defendants $12,000 for \"frivolous pleading.\"<br /><br />The defendants didn't show up for trial, and Wood awarded the plaintiffs about $205 million.<br /><br />On appeal, defendants argued that jurisdiction never returned to Harris County and that the recusal motions were still pending because Herman handled them improperly.<br /><br />Appeals judges rejected the first argument but accepted the second, ruling that a law against triple recusal applied only if all three motions involved the same judge.<br /><br />Plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court of Texas, where defendants asserted that hand delivery of the federal court order circumvented a requirement for mailing.<br /><br />Defendants declared the whole case moot, pleading that jurisdiction hadn't vested in federal court or Harris County.<br /><br />They didn't persuade any of the Justices.<br /><br />\"We reject defendants' argument that both federal and state courts have been divested of jurisdiction and the case now exists in a strange procedural twilight zone,\" Justice Don Willett wrote.<br /><br />He wrote that \"hand delivery of the remand order in this case successfully effected the transfer of jurisdiction from federal to state court.\"<br /><br />Longoria furthered a policy of avoiding excessive delay in resolving disputes, he wrote.<br /><br />The Justices found that the appeals court wrongly applied the law on triple recusal.<br /><br />\"Defendants' interpretation would produce absurd results, with litigants able to delay resolution of their cases by clogging courts with a seemingly limitless number of recusal motions,\" Willett wrote.<br /><br />That didn't settle the matter, however, for the Justices held that Herman should not have ruled on the recusal motion against him.<br /><br />\"Judge Herman eventually referred that motion to Chief Justice Jefferson, and we find no prejudice stemming from Judge Herman's belated referral,\" Willett wrote.<br /><br />\"If the motion is denied, the court of appeals shall affirm the trial court's judgment,\" he wrote.<br /><br />\"If the motion is granted, the court of appeals shall reverse the trial court's judgment and remand to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,\" he wrote.<br /><br />Longoria, Daryl Moore, Thomas Phillips and Martha Newton represented plaintiffs.<br /><br />Andres Perez-Chaumont, Armanda Lopez, Andy Taylor and Eric Nielsen represented defendants.<br />"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://setexasrecord.com/stories/510613469-chief-justice-to-sort-out-unique-triple-recusal-case>