BATON ROUGE, La. -- Former Southern University System President Ralph Slaughter was sanctioned Monday and ordered to pay $8,000 in fines and attorney fees by state District Court Judge Tim Kelley.
Southern Board of Supervisors lawyer Lewis Unglesby filed a motion for sanctions against Slaughter. He claimed Slaughter had filed frivolous motions to disqualify both Kelley and fellow state District Judge Janice Clark from deciding his lawsuit.
"The recusal motions were unfounded, legally and factually," Unglesby said. "It"s just another saga of the Ralph Slaughter disaster."
Slaughter lost his job after his contract ran out in June. He is suing in both state district and federal courts for retaliation and wrongful termination by the Southern Board.
After Monday's hearing in Kelley's court, Slaughter vowed to appeal and keep fighting.
“We're going to appeal everything he (Kelley) has touched to the (state) Court of Appeals," Slaughter said.
He contends both Kelley and Clark have conflicts of interest.
Kelley is married to state Commissioner of Administration Angele Davis, which makes her Gov. Bobby Jindal's chief budget architect.
Slaughter contends a conflict of interest because Davis' office has some control over university budgets. He also argued that Davis' office is over the state Office of Risk Management, through which Unglesby is contracted to represent Southern.
Slaughter said Kelley ruling on the motion that involves Kelley directly has a "chilling effect" as a precedent on the ability of someone to seek recusal of a judge.
Last fall, Clark recused herself from another suit Slaughter filed against the Southern Board after Slaughter complained she was represented in an unrelated civil case by the DeCuir, Clark and Adams law firm, which also represents Southern.
In December, Kelley threw out Slaughter's loss-of-wages suit and, in the process, called Slaughter the "least credible" witness he had seen in his 13 years on the bench. Kelley also said Slaughter's departure from Southern marked the end of a "very, very dark era" in the university's history.
Slaughter said Monday he plans to amend his complaint against Kelley to the Judiciary Commission of Louisiana.
Slaughter wrote in his initial complaint about the judge that Kelley allowed Unglesby, who he called Davis' lawyer, "to make unsubstantiated, slanderous and defamatory remarks about me throughout the trial." He also complained that Kelley was rude and disrespectful to Jill Craft, Slaughter's lawyer.
Out of the $8,000 Slaughter was ordered to pay, $500 is in sanctions and the remaining $7,500 is in attorney's fees to Southern.
The Division of Administration is under the governor's office and the governor's office does not control Southern, Unglesby said.
"There's no gray in this," he said. "It's all black and white."
Although Slaughter denies it, Unglesby said Slaughter and Craft were well aware that Davis is Kelley's wife.
"Eventually Dr. Slaughter has got to get the message that he needs to stop using the legal system and move onto another phase of his life," Unglesby said.
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Information from: The Advocate, http://www.2theadvocate.com
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
