by Sean Sullivan

THE WASHTENAW TRIAL Court primary elections provided few surprises to those in the local legal community. On August 5, voters selected lawyers Patrick Conlin and Veronique Liem to compete in November for the Circuit Court seat being vacated by Judge Donald Shelton in September. Voters also chose Probate Court Judge Julia B. Owdzeij and lawyer Tracy Van den bergh to compete for the Probate Court seat vacated by former Judge Nancy Francis. In June 2014, Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Referee Owdzeij to Francis’s seat, turning Owdzeij into the incumbent. It is a status Judge Owdzeij has been accused of promoting in ways that border on the unethical and misleading.

Appeals lawyer Laurie Longo alleges that Owdzeij’s campaign signs imply she has held her current post for 20 years.

“What’s she’s doing in unethical,” said another lawyer who practices family law in Ann Arbor. “And then she has her campaign yard signs placed illegally all over Ann Arbor and the county. Judges are supposed to avoid even the suggestion of impropriety. She’s breaking the law.”

While attorney campaign donations and support of  candidates opposing Owdzeij could undermine such allegations, AnnArborChronicle.com posted a piece about Judge Owdzeij.

Editor David Askins writes in a column posted on July 28:

“The sign displays the text ‘Judge Julia Owdziej in the context of the campaign tagline ‘Protecting the County’s Most Vulnerable for Over 20 Years.’

“The sign seems to implicate that Owdziej has been serving as judge for two decades, not two months. Certainly if I were editing an endorsement op-ed that included a sentence like, ‘Judge Julia Owdziej has protected Washtenaw County’s most vulnerable for over 20 years,’ I would move to strike the word ‘judge.’”

As of July 20, Tracy Van den Bergh had raised $51,575 in cash contributions and $4,280 in-kind. She spent $38,532 and has put in over $12,000 of her own money, according to campaign finance disclosure forms filed with the Michigan Secretary of State. She raised three times more money than the incumbent. However, with 70 percent of the vote counted, Judge Owdziej had captured 8,185 votes to Van den Bergh’s  7,239 votes.

If the three losing Probate Court primary election candidates throw their support behind Van den Bergh, she could conceivably have the financial and political clout necessary to be the first candidate to unseat an incumbent judge in recent memory.

Judge Owdziej’s work has been criticized. There have been allegations from multiple sources that she changed custody of children without holding either a probable cause or evidentiary hearing. If true, such a decision would be contrary to state statute.

The race between Veronique Liem (who captured 10,328 votes, with 70 percent of the vote counted) and Conlin (who captured 11,697 votes, with 70 percent of the vote counted) pits a lawyer from a family with multi-generational judicial service (Conlin) against a naturalized French woman who came to Ann Arbor to attend U-M and never left.

While Liem made campaign donations to many of the candidates running for local elected office, including City Council and mayor, Conlin donated to a handful of local candidates.

Both Liem and Conlin would bring non-traditional credentials and/or work experience to the job, if elected. Patrick Conlin did not go into law after graduating from Notre Dame. It was after he’d taught high school English for several years that Conlin returned to Michigan, enrolled at Wayne State and earned his Juris Doctor in 1997.

Veronique Liem earned her MBA and law degrees from U-M and has practiced law for 27 years.

In an interview, Liem pointed to her MBA as giving her important additional qualifications: “In addition to my family law experience, I have represented parties in employment, business, commercial and real estate litigation.”

Conlin told the Washtenaw Legal News in January 2014: “I have more than 15 years’ experience in a general practice, regularly appearing before all circuit judges and district judges in the county for all of that time. My practice is about 60 percent family law, so the current docket assignment would be perfect for my skill set.”

County voters will chose the next Circuit and Probate Court judges in the November 2014 general election.