Ethics panel recommends Georgia judge be removed

ATLANTA — Georgia’s Supreme Court should permanently remove a state appeals court judge accused of ethical misconduct, a judicial discipline panel recommended in a report released Monday.

The three-member state panel said Christian Coomer flouted ethics rules on how a lawyer should treat a client and looted his campaign account to pay for family vacations and loans to keep his struggling law firm afloat.

“Respondent’s persistent failure to abide by basic ethical and professional standards for lawyers and jurists justifies — in fact necessitates — the recommendation to the Supreme Court that Respondent be removed from office,” the panel of the Judicial Qualifications Commission wrote in a 50-page report summing up a seven-day trial on the issue from last year.

Coomer will have a chance to respond, and the high court justices could disregard both the facts and the recommendations. Coomer’s lawyer, Mark Lefkow, noted that although the panel found that commission staffers had proved 29 of 34 counts, it found that it had not been proven that Coomer had committed fraud, deceit, dishonesty or misrepresentation.