I’ll never forget the first time we met with policyholder lawyers after Nowdy and I established Slabbed. One of the things that made that first meet and greet fun for me was the fact the gang of Louisiana based lawyers looked over the state line into Mississippi with a bit of envy for their counterparts here on the coast. It initially puzzled me because to that point the bigger dollar verdicts were coming from the Louisiana Eastern District Federal Courts. When I inquired why that was the response was telling:
You have a judge who isn’t afraid to try cases….
Today Anita Lee at the Sun Herald checks back in with a detailed profile of Judge Senter on the day he retired from the bench in a story that is actually worthy of two posts. Today, Slabbed comes to praise Judge Senter, not to bury him as I quote not from Anita’s story (which is well worth the read) but from policyholder lawyer Judy Guice, whom the Sun Herald quoted in related coverage:
He was the type of judge that took his job, but not himself, seriously. Judge Senter’s personal character traits of integrity and fairness have made him an exemplary judge, as well as a first class human being. He was a champion for justice during the Hurricane Katrina litigation, never backing down from what he thought was right. We should all be eternally grateful for his tireless efforts.
The ultimate vindication for Judge Senter, as Anita’s story points out, is the fact that while the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals could have certified the questions surrounding Anti Concurrent Causation in Leonard to the Mississippi Supreme Court they chose not to do so. Instead Judge Edith Jones at the 5th Circuit tried her hand at insurance law with disastrous results for the policyholders. It was not until late 2009 that Corban v USAA settled the issue once and for all.
Turned out Edith “The Dingbat” Jones was badly mistaken as the MSSC essentially copied a portion of Judge Senter’s opinion in Leonard and adopted it for their own. Unfortunately for the policyholders that Judge Dingbat hosed with her earlier ruling, the mistake meant that many Slabbers were forced to settle their insurance claims for far less money than they were entitled.
In part 2 I’ll revisit the George Dale mediation program as I illustrate that even good Judges can get certain things badly wrong.
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