An upstate City Court judge has been admonished by the Commission on Judicial Conduct for presiding over cases brought by a local attorney whom the judge’s law firm had hired to act as a debt collector. The commission said yesterday that David A. Shults, an attorney and part-time judge in Hornell, Steuben County, acknowledged that he did not disclose that his firm, Shults and Shults, had hired Joseph G. Pelych of Hornell to enforce court judgments the firm had obtained.
The commission reported that Judge Shults improperly presided over nine cases involving Mr. Pelych. “It is inexplicable why the attorney’s request for the respondent’s recusal failed to bring to his attention that he should not be presiding, or even to create a doubt in his mind sufficient to check the Advisory Opinions [on judicial ethics] or other relevant law,” the commission held. But it noted in mitigation that the judge had been called on unexpectedly to fill in for another judge on the day of his alleged violations and may not have been aware of his firm’s relationship with Mr. Pelych. Moreover, the commission observed that the judge cooperated fully with its investigation.
