A Columbia County Court of Common Pleas judge won’t recuse himself from overseeing a medical malpractice suit that involves a man whom the judge had prosecuted in his former role as district attorney.
On March 14, Judge Gary E. Norton dismissed a motion for recusal in Matos v. Geisinger Medical Center after counsel for the medical center contended that Norton’s prosecution of the man who murdered the plaintiff’s decedent in an unrelated case several years prior to the civil action necessitated that Norton remove himself as judge. Norton opined that he had little recollection of his interactions with the man, and that the defendant’s motion was made as a bad-faith attempt to “judge shop.”
