Court system turmoil
A candidate for judge in the county court says the county judicial system is little more than an old boys club and the president judge is at the helm, while those she is accusing say the baseless accusations are a political grab.
Attorney Jennifer Gilliland Vanasdale said when she learned in October 2017 of the sexual misconduct lawsuit filed by county probation officer Crystal Starnes against Thomas Doerr, the president judge at the Court of Common Pleas, she called the president of the county Bar Association, Tom Breth.
Vanasdale said she felt the case would merit a special meeting of the county bar.
“I thought (the case) called into question (Doerr's) integrity and propriety,” she said.
She said Breth told her he would think about it, then called her the next day to say there would be no special meeting on the Doerr case.
A few weeks later, she saw a Butler Eagle article stating that an attorney with Breth's law firm, Dillon McCandless King Coulter and Graham, would be representing Doerr in the lawsuit.
Vanasdale said she called Breth and asked him if he had related their conversation to that attorney, Tom King, to which Breth replied he had.
She said Doerr soon recused himself from all cases involving Vanasdale.
Vanasdale also takes issue in the response with Doerr's wife, attorney Lori Doerr, and the wife of District Attorney Richard Goldinger, attorney Rebecca Lozzi, serving as attorneys representing children in some family court cases in which the attorneys, custody conciliators, the judge or others feel the children involved in a case are in need of legal representation.
Vanasdale feels it is improper for Lori Doerr and Lozzi to act as attorneys for children, known in the legal world as guardians ad litem, in Butler County due to the positions of their husbands.
Lori Doerr said on Sunday that “absolutely nothing improper was done by anybody.”
She said Vanasdale could have voiced her opposition to her serving as a guardian ad litem in 2011, when Doerr was appointed to the position.
“If Ms. Vanasdale felt something inappropriate was going on in the county, she had an absolute obligation to turn that in to the discipline board,” Doerr said. “Where was she for all these years?”
<>Read the full report in Monday's Butler Eagle.>
