Former Supreme Court Justice Betty Weaver Accuses Former and Current Chief Justices of Unethical Behavior

“These were deals, and I wouldn’t make the deals. The majority of four simply were not liking that I wouldn’t be bullied. I was going to stand up, even alone.” -Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver

Move over, Kitty Kelley.   You have a new competitor in former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver.

Weaver who had a reputation of being the bad girl of the court during her 16 years on the Supreme Court for her brash and often in-your-face behavior, is penning a memoir of her time as a justice.

According to the Chad Livengood and Gary Heinlein of the Detroit News, Weaver has 750 pages of dirt she wants to dish about her former GOP colleagues on the bench.

Weaver and co-author David Schock claim in “Judicial Deceit: Tyranny and Unnecessary Secrecy at the Michigan Supreme Court,” there were countless instances of unethical behavior among justices during her 16-year career on the high court. . . .

Weaver, a former Republican nominee to the technically nonpartisan bench, and Schock contend the state Supreme Court is corrupted by ideology and secrecy and special interest groups that bankroll the campaigns of Michigan’s statewide partisan election of justices. She argued campaign donations from Democratic and Republican party interests compromise judicial neutrality.

“It is very much like the ‘Wizard of Oz’ where Dorothy and Toto pulled back the curtain and found out the Wizard was deceiving everybody,” Weaver said in describing her book.

In her book, “Judicial Deceit: Tyranny and Unnecessary Secrecy at the Michigan Supreme Court,” Weaver and co-author David Schock claim there were countless acts that could be described as unethical behavior among justices during her tenure on the high court.  She aims most of her venom at former Chief Justice Cliff Taylor who was beaten by disgraced Justice Dianne Hathaway in 2008 and whose tenure was marked by complaints about conflicts of interest due to the campaign finance system.

In her book, Weaver brings up the feud between the “Engler Four” and attorney Geoffrey Fieger.

Fieger asked the court in August 2006 to halt a reprimand against him for disparaging three appeals court judges in a malpractice lawsuit against Beaumont Hospital.  The “Engler Four” included Taylor and justices Stephen Markman, Robert Young Jr. and Maura Corrigan were also upset because of public statements Fieger made about them being in the back pockets of insurance companies and other corporate interests and because he spent thousands of dollars to remove them from the bench in previous elections.

According to the Detroit News, Weaver accuses, “former Chief Justice Clifford Taylor of offering to change his ruling on a Fieger matter if she would withdraw a public dissent accusing Taylor and three other justices of being biased and prejudiced against Fieger,”

 All I can say is, “Oh boy, this is going to be good!” when the book comes out.