Miscellaneous

That's the Honorable "No-Good Son of a Bitch!"

Man, a local judge down in Jacksonville is getting hammered right now. Seems that Circuit Judge Aaron Bowden decided to give his judicial assistant an early Christmas, firing her twelve days before the day of the birth of the Christ. The Chief Circuit Judge in Bowden's court has since called him a "no-good son of a bitch," and others are similarly hammering Bowden.

It's not so much that he fired 54-year-old Christine Birch, who had been his judicial assistant for 17 years, just before Christmas. It's more that she's been on leave since August, fighting cancer, and now has no medical, life or disability insurance.

So yeah, Bowden kinda is a no good son of a bitch.

The Chief Circuit Judge has since put Birch back on the court's payroll as a rotating judicial assistant, and other judges' assistants took up a collection to cover Birch's rent for the month.

Bowden, meanwhile, said he felt like he had to fire her on December 13 so that he could hire a new assistant before a two-month hiring freeze went into effect on December 15. As he put it in an e-mail last month, if she had died while on the court's payroll, he would've been prevented from getting a new assistant for a whole two months.

So whatever with your cancer, lady -- that's true tragedy!

Full post as published by Quiz Law on January 17, 2008 (boomark / email).