Former common pleas judge Burge suspended

Former Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James M. Burge was suspended from practicing law Aug. 13 for a year with six months stayed.

The Ohio Supreme Court announced its decision based on the recommendation of the Board of Professional Conduct after Burge appealed the board’s recommendation that he be suspended last December.

Burge did not return a call for comment on the suspension.

In the order suspending Burge, the High Court wrote that half of the suspension is stayed on the condition he engage in no further misconduct.

The order also requires that within the next 30 days, Burge must notify all his clients and any cocounsel of the suspension and advise them to seek legal counsel elsewhere.

He also must deliver to all his clients any documents or property belonging to them, refund any fees or expenses paid in advance that are unearned and notify any opposing counsel or adverse parties in pending lawsuits of his disqualification.

Furthermore, Burge must send all notices required by the order by certified mail, file an affidavit with the court showing he’d complied with the order and retain and maintain a record of his steps to follow the order.

The suspension is rooted in Burge’s actions when he was on the bench and the conduct that led to his resignation.

Burge resigned after he was convicted in April 2015 of three counts of misdemeanor falsification and misdemeanor tampering with records.

He was resentenced in that case to only paying $3,000 in fines.

The charges were derived from his financial disclosure statements from 2010, 2011 and 2012 where he failed to disclose he and his wife’s interest in Whiteacre North LLc, which owned the building at 600 Broadway in Lorain, where attorneys rented office space to local attorneys.

Burge failed to name Lorain National Bank as a debtor on the forms, which was at the time, holding a $365,000 mortgage on the property.

Burge also made at least 10 court appointments to five attorneys who rented space in the building and approved the payment of court-appointed attorney fees to two lawyers renting space in his building.

He did not disclose his connection, through the rented office space, to prosecutors on the cases, nor did he recuse himself from those cases.

The suspension also is tied to Burge’s tendency while on the bench to refer to white defendants as “crackers” while referring to black and Hispanic defendants as “homeboys.”

There also was an incident in which Burge allegedly made promises to a defendant awaiting sentencing when the two met, without the presence of the defendant’s lawyer, in a hallway at the courthouse.