Top US bankruptcy judge, under ethics review, steps back from major cases

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones in Houston, who oversees more major Chapter 11 cases than any other U.S. judge, said on Friday he is facing an ethics review over a previously undisclosed romantic relationship and is stepping down from handling large cases.

Jones said over the weekend he has been in a years-long romantic relationship and shared a home with bankruptcy attorney Elizabeth Freeman, who had been a law clerk for him. Until recently, Freeman worked at Jackson Walker, a local law firm that filed many cases in Jones’ Houston courthouse.

Jones said at a court hearing in the bankruptcy case of drilling company Arethusa Offshore that he is under investigation from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and that all his bankruptcy cases involving large companies would be assigned to other judges during the investigation.

“I hope that you can appreciate that the integrity of the process is simply more important than a single case and you have my genuine apologies for the inconvenience that I am causing,” Jones told the company’s attorneys.

Chief 5th U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman, in a misconduct complaint made public later on Friday, said there was probable cause to believe Jones violated the codes of conduct that govern judges by, among other things, failing to avoid an appearance of impropriety.

Richman said that while Jones and Freeman were not married, the factors that apply to recusing from a case involving a judge’s spouse apply equally when a judge maintains both a household and an intimate relationship with someone they are not married to.

Yet, she wrote, Jones never recused himself from cases involving Jackson Walker or disclosed his relationship with Freeman. The judge approved attorneys’ fees sought by Jackson Walker for work on bankruptcy matters in which billing records showed Freeman performed “substantial” services, Richman said.

The Houston bankruptcy court on Friday also updated its case assignment rules to remove Jones from a two-judge panel that oversees all complex cases involving more than $200 million in debt.

Legal ethics experts have said Jones should have disclosed the relationship or recused himself from cases involving Jackson Walker.

A spokesman for Jackson Walker said the firm consulted outside ethics counsel after learning about the romantic relationship in March 2021.

“From the time we first learned of this allegation Ms. Freeman was instructed not to work or bill on any cases before Judge Jones,” Jackson Walker spokesman Jim Wilkinson said. “We are confident that we acted responsibly.”

Freeman, through her attorney, declined to comment.

Jones has been the busiest bankruptcy judge in the U.S. since January 2016, overseeing 11% of all Chapter 11 bankruptcies involving more than $100 million in liabilities, according to data from Debtwire, which provides research and intelligence on credit markets. He recently presided over the bankruptcies of JC Penney (OTC:), Neiman Marcus, Party City and Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:), among many others.

The two-judge panel for complex cases is an outlier among U.S. bankruptcy courts, which typically assign cases randomly among all of their judges.

Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur, who stepped down from the panel a year ago, will replace Jones, and all of Jones’ complex cases will be randomly assigned to Isgur or the panel’s other member, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez.