BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Louisiana’s Supreme Court ordered a lawyer suspended for misconduct after he filed motions to recuse multiple judges from a case.
Last Friday’s ruling found that Otha Curtis Nelson Sr.’s “frivolous” motions to recuse two district court judges and all the judges in the state’s first circuit appeals court from a community property partition case was “serious and improper,” the Advocate reported. His suspension will last for over a year.
This is the second time the Baton Rouge lawyer was disciplined by the high court. In 2014, he was suspended for nearly three years on multiple misconduct violations, including for collecting excessive fees, the Advocate reported.
The court said during that suspension that Nelson also caused a mistrial by removing white jurors from a case.
In the latest ruling, the justices added that Nelson had also neglected a legal matter and did not communicate with a client in one case. Nelson declined the Advocate’s request for comment on this story.
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