Judges are not precluded from presiding over cases involving large companies in which they or their spouses own small numbers of shares, according to a recent opinion by the Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics.
According to Opinion 15-155 released Oct. 28, a judge asked whether he or she could preside over cases in which certain large, publicly traded companies are parties. The judge and spouse own securities in several of these companies, but the aggregate value of these holdings is less than $250,000, which the judge says is an “infinitesimal” fraction of the companies’ outstanding shares or bonds.
