Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Iyer Julian awarded sanctions on May 26 against Mark Finchem and his attorney over Finchem’s lawsuit challenging his election loss in the Arizona Secretary of State’s race to Democrat Adrian Fontes.
Finchem (pictured above) issued a response from his Substack. Titled “Yes, We Have a Two Tier Legal System.” In this piece, he advocated removing “judges who act outside of the law.”
Finchem said, “In what is commonly now known as ‘lawfare’ (legal warfare), the radical left has sought to pervert the law through judicial activism. On point is this fact, there is no provision in law for sanctions in CONTEST law.” He suggested impeaching the judges or voting them out in retention elections. Most judges in Arizona are appointed by the governor, they do not run for election initially. They remain in office by winning retention elections.
One of Finchem’s arguments opposing the defendants’ motion for sanctions was that “Arizona’s appellate courts have consistently over the decades ruled that attorneys’ fees are not to be granted in Election Contests.” He cited Democratic Party of Pima County v. Ford, where the Arizona Court of Appeals held that since the legislature had not included a statute providing for sanctions in election contest lawsuits, they cannot be awarded.
Julian dismissed the argument in several sentences, stating that the burden was on Finchem to show that the legislature intended that. However, the court, in that case, found otherwise, “If the legislature had intended to require the recovery of costs under § 12-341, it easily could have said so.”
Read the rest of the article at The Arizona Sun Times