We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Judge Floyd, meet Pink Floyd.
For eight years, Judge Floyd was “just another brick in the wall,” a flimsy wall he built himself at the urging of plaintiffs' counsel to impede the proper administration of justice. He may have thought that he didn't “need no education,” but he got one anyway, thanks to the Ninth Court of Appeals.
(The judge may have been “thick as a brick,” too, but that's a different song from a different band.)
When jurors concluded in 2008 that DuPont De Nemours was not responsible for the death of a former employee from mesothelioma, plaintiffs attorney Glen Morgan of the Beaumont law firm Reaud, Morgan & Quinn moved for a new trial and 172nd District Court Judge Donald Floyd obliged, offering no justification for his decision and ignoring
the Texas State Supreme Court's subsequent demand for an explanation.
Morgan’s firm was a big donor to Floyd’s last reelection campaign.
Last September, Floyd again issued an order granting Morgan’s motion
for a new trial.
As DuPont attorneys summed up the situation, “The trial court granted a new trial on grounds that the jury’s verdict against Plaintiffs was contrary to the great weight and preponderance of the evidence, adopting verbatim an order prepared by plaintiffs’ counsel that ignored the evidence supporting the verdict and, further, wrongly stated that DuPont produced no such evidence.”
Last month, having concluded once again that the record does not support Floyd's ordering of a new trial, the Ninth Court of Appeals directed the seemingly incorrigible judge to enter judgment on the 2008 jury verdict.
Floyd finally got the message and did as he'd been told by his superiors. On April 30th the remedially-educated judge stopped being a brick in the wall and finally entered final judgment in favor of DuPont.
Maybe next time he won't take so long getting educated.
Judge Floyd gets educated
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