In a positively Rumpolian editorial, the Miami Herald (who we suspect may just be reading this blog) "slammed" Judge Zilber and called for the Florida Supreme Court to "slam" Judge Zilber. The Editorial is here.
The "Tiger Slam" in golf is winning all four major tournaments consecutively, albeit over two years. The "Zilber-Slam" shall be forever known as getting slammed by the JQC, Rumpole, and The Miami Herald, in that order. Not to be confused with the "Full Ginsberg", which is media speak for appearing on all the Sunday morning nationwide news talk shows in one morning including Meet the Press, Face the Nation, The Week On ABC, (Trump's) Fox News Sunday, and the Late Edition on CNN. The term is so named after attorney William H Ginsburg, who accomplished it on February 1, 1998, while defending one Monica Lewinsky.
From the Herald Slam:
Here’s one more achievement for Martin Zilber’s scrapbook: The Miami-Dade Circuit judge is facing a 60-day suspension and $30,000 fine for routinely skipping work, ordering his staff to run personal errands for him and, yes, having a staffer assemble a scrapbook of his achievements.
(ouch)
...
In addition to being in charge of the judge’s calendar and running his office, this beleaguered woman also was forced to work on the scrapbook. Once, according to the JQC, he asked this pregnant assistant to wheel his chair up “several floors to the courtroom and then lift it onto the dais prior to hearings.”
We can only hope the judge wasn’t seated in the chair when he made her do this.
(Yowza! What a shot! We are seriously jealous of whomever wrote that Zilber-Zinger).
...And once the coronavirus pandemic hit, he hit the road — to Malibu, California, for a week.
Well as they say in the Media, "This story has legs"- just not the ones attached to a certain formerly pregnant JA.
In all seriousness, the pompousness of the Judge's behavior and his treatment of his staff speaks volumes and is what is fueling this story we believe. Judges -especially during the pandemic- just don't have a lot to do at times. At other times, despite what this blog sometimes implies, they work very long and hard, slogging through trial after trial, separating the legal wheat from the inadmissible chafe.
So the Judge not being in Court is no big deal to us. But we think the insight into his character by the way he has been reported to treat his staff- ordering them to run personal errands, driving him around as is he is some celebrity, creating some ego-driven scrap book, moving furniture for goodness sakes- all of this speaks to a person with a big ego who thinks they are special. The best judges we know are the ones who know they are not special. The judges who truly act on the belief that they are privileged to hold their position. We see these judges- the ones who are in their chambers brewing coffee for their jurors and the lawyers; the ones who are photocopying cases and doing whatever needs to be done to move a calendar and a case. This is what is so offensive about the reported conduct, and this is what is giving the story the "legs" we are talking about.