Judge Pauline Newman’s colleagues on a federal appeals court in Washington have called her “the heroine of the patent system” and “the most beloved colleague on our court.” But on Wednesday, they also told Judge Newman, 96, that she had been suspended amid growing concerns about her mental fitness.
The order suspending Judge Newman for one year followed an unusually bitter and public dispute over her cognitive state and her ability to continue to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized court that hears patent cases.
Judge Newman, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, has vigorously challenged her colleagues’ investigation into her fitness and has said she is mentally able to do her job. Earlier this year, she filed a federal lawsuit accusing the chief judge of the court, Kimberly A. Moore, and other colleagues of violating her due process rights.
In the unanimous order, which was issued by the court’s active judges, Judge Newman’s colleagues wrote that they had no choice but to suspend her, despite her status as “a highly valued and respected colleague,” widely recognized for her contributions to the court and knowledge of the patent system.
More than 20 interviews with members of the court staff, along with emails sent by Judge Newman, “provided overwhelming evidence,” the order said, that she “may be experiencing significant mental problems including memory loss, lack of comprehension, confusion and an inability to perform basic tasks that she previously was able to perform with ease.”
The order said that evidence pointed to instances in which Judge Newman, when struggling with basic tasks, “became frustrated, agitated, belligerent and hostile.”
“With no rational reason — other than frustration over her own confusion — Judge Newman has threatened to have staff arrested, forcibly removed from the building and fired,” the order said. “She accused staff of trickery, deceit, acting as her adversary, stealing her computer, stealing her files and depriving her of secretarial support.”
Her refusal to comply with a special committee’s order that she be examined by a neurologist and undergo neuropsychological tests “constitutes serious misconduct,” the order said. It said she could be suspended again in one year if she continued to refuse to undergo the required tests.
“We are acutely aware that this is not a fitting capstone to Judge Newman’s exemplary and storied career,” the order said. “We all would prefer a different outcome for our friend and colleague.” Gregory Dolin, Judge Newman’s lead lawyer, said on Wednesday that he planned to ask a panel of judges from around the country to review the order, which he called “flatly illegal.”
He said Judge Newman was never given an opportunity to question court staff members who had made accusations about her mental fitness. He also said it was inappropriate for her colleagues, who have personal knowledge of the claims against her, to judge her fitness for office.
“She obviously believes she’s perfectly competent, and her physicians have confirmed that,” Mr. Dolin said.
It is not uncommon for federal judges, who have life tenure, to serve into their later years. Judge Wesley E. Brown, who died in 2012, regularly presided over cases well past his 104th birthday, with a tube under his nose feeding him oxygen during hearings.
Judge Newman’s suspension seemed bound to reignite the debate over mandatory retirement ages and term limits for federal judges. A 2020 study in The Ohio State Law Journal found that the average age of federal judges was 69, older than it had been at any other time in the country’s history.
Arthur D. Hellman, a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said the suspension was a “fascinating but also sad development.” He said it was “extremely unusual that this whole proceeding has been carried out in public view.”
“Almost always in the past, when something like this has happened, it has been handled behind closed doors, without a formal proceeding and certainly without the public scrutiny we’ve had with this proceeding,” Professor Hellman said, noting instances in which the spouses or children of federal judges had nudged them toward retirement.
The order said that Judge Newman’s colleagues had tried to handle concerns about her fitness internally but that she had refused to speak to them or quickly ended their attempts to discuss the issue. Judge Moore had shared a draft complaint with Judge Newman detailing some of the concerns and tried to meet with her, the order said. But Judge Newman refused repeated requests for a meeting, it said.
Interactions with Judge Newman had become “so dysfunctional,” the order said, that the clerk of the court had advised staff members to avoid interacting with her in person or to bring a co-worker with them.
Mr. Dolin said that Judge Newman had submitted to the court reports from two doctors she chose — a neurologist and a forensic psychiatrist — who “concluded she suffers from no mental or cognitive disability that would render her unable to perform the functions of her office.”
Judge Newman also provided an analysis that found she was writing opinions as quickly this year as she was in 2018, before anyone formally complained about her mental fitness, Mr. Dolin said.
Judge Newman has no plans to retire, Mr. Dolin said, but would step down if her doctors believed it were necessary.
“She’s not holding on to this because she’s got nothing better going on in her life,” Mr. Dolin said. “She is doing this job because she believes in this job, and she believes she has something to contribute.”
That’s textbook Alzheimer’s, or elderly decline. They trust themselves (and the pastor on TV) and distrust their close family members.
My grandma had Alzheimer’s before she passed.
She once accused me of trying to poison her. I was making pico de gallo; all I had in the bowl were fine chopped tomatoes.
She came over demanded to test the salsa because I keep trying to kill her (nope.) and plotting to kill her (quiet conversations with my dad while she was watching Golden Girls. About robots and stuff.) ripped open the bag of chips, sampled it and huffed “it’s too spicy!” And trying to get into my face over it.
It was literally just tomatoes.
Paranoia is super common in dimentia patients. Though, one good thing I’ll say about Alzheimer’s is you’ll never see a rerun again
My father, who once had an amazing memory, now delights in watching the same few British murder mystery series over and over, because he doesn’t remember anything about them. I can literally ask him the next morning about something engrossing we watched the preceding eve, and he won’t recognize any of the plots, characters, settings, or other details.
Meanwhile, he can talk very cogently about events from the Kennedy administration.
A really good metaphor that I heard was that our memory is like a stack of papers with the newest memories on top. Alzheimer’s is like having an open window beside the stack of papers that keeps blowing away the top of the stack of paper.
It was golden girls for grandma. reruns on hallmark channel, IIRC. (and she’d freak out about that time she got stung by bees as a kid, when she woke up from a doze. and then blame the nearest male for sicking them on her.)
Any unexpected racism? I dated a girl in college whose formerly composed grandmother couldn’t be taken anywhere public, because she would unselfconsciously say super-racist stuff, right in front of some poor POC just going about their day. And, she often thought she was complimenting them, so she couldn’t understand why she was being shushed and would try to restate and elaborate on her comment, getting increasingly loud and frustrated.
Not her, no. She did threaten the city employee running the bingo thing at city hall with a baseball bat because she thought they were cheating. (and they seem to have been, if that matters,)
That wasn’t terribly out of character. One of my earliest memories was where we visited her at work. She worked in a hospital billing department. She bitched down and cursed out a surgeon for price gouging someone until they dropped their price to something that she new Medicare or whatever would agree to,
That’s right. A five foot nothing women bullied and it intimidated everyone. To say she was an interesting person would be an understatement.
step grandmother #5, on the other hand (the other side, she put the evil in evil step grandmother,) was always racist but she lost the awareness that it was inappropriate to be overt about it. I think a large part of it is the regressed mentally to manners that they grew up around.
My wife just spent a week watching after her grandmother who has some form of dementia/Alzheimer’s. She lives with my mother in law normally, but she definitely needed a vacation, so my wife spent the week at their home.
One night she made some pasta with vodka sauce, just basic store-bought jarred vodka sauce. Her grandmother complained that it was too spicy. I don’t know which brand she picked up, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a vodka sauce I would have described as being spicy.
So between the cognitive decline and her having an old white lady palate to begin with, my wife basically didn’t have any food with flavor all week, she was really excited to come home and order some Indian food.
It was also a battle to get her to drink water, even though she constantly wants to go for walks, it was 90+ degrees out, and she wore a sweater the whole time.
Luckily she’s still pretty chill, she doesn’t really freak out over anything, at least not yet, but she can be really stubborn and is just really draining to deal with.
I got shanghaied into fixing a sink that wasn’t draining for them recently. It took me maybe an hour to do, and in that time she must have come up to ask if I needed anything at least 5 or 6 times.
She also drove my wife nuts about a small hole in the attic that she’s convinced a bird is getting in through (jury is still out as to whether or not there even is a actually a bird) and she kept trying to get my wife (who is not particularly handy) to go up into the attic (that was probably 110 degrees) to cover the hole with cardboard (because that will totally keep a bird out, let alone the elements)
I had to look up a vodka sauce… is the vodka just used for deglazing the nice browned bits (and cooking off so it doesn’t change the hydration/consistency of the sauce much)? All I know is that the vodka I keep in my house absolutely will add a certain kick. Mostly because the only thing I use vodka for is cutting the heat of peppers- habenero, ghost peppers, carolina reapers- It softens their heat so it’s not quite as overpowering, and the vodka can be used to add that heat with a certain measure of control.
I might just have to try a thing…
Though, it was hilarious when my SiL’s dad was visiting and apparently raided my booze cabinet and decided to make a vesper (you know. bond’s awful cocktail of choice. Even Ian Flemming thought it was disgusting.). he would be the kind of midwesterner who thinks buttered bread is spicy. (do not under any circumstances let them bring their nasty-ass potato salad. or the green bean casserole. that smelled like plague that had been vomited back up.)
I’ve seen some recipes that use it for deglazing, but mostly I’ve seen them call for just adding it to the sauce, usually in the neighborhood of ¼-⅓ of a cup to the whole pot (which can feel like quite a lot of vodka when you look at it in your measuring cup, but it’s less than 2 standard shots for the whole meal) Kenji at serious eats did some experiments on the subject and did find that the vodka does improve the flavor, I believe the science was something like the alcohol helps to aromatize certain compounds in the tomatoes that aren’t very water soluble and at low concentrations alcohol tastes sweet, and some places claim it helps to emulsify the sauce.
Personally when I make it, I do tend to lean towards a spicier sauce with a good bit more than the token pinch of pepper flakes most recipes call for (that pinch isn’t doing much against a cup of heavy cream in the sauce) so spicy vodka would probably work pretty well in it for people who are into that sort of thing.
Also funny you mentioned the Vesper, I just picked up a bottle of Cocchi Americano (which is apparently closer to the Kina Lillet that Bond would have used than modern Lillet Blanc) so of course I had to try out a Vesper for myself. I wouldn’t call it awful, but it was an overall disappointment of a cocktail. I expected that, I always heard it was a pretty meh drink so I wasn’t surprised, but then again bond drinks shaken vodka martinis instead of stirred gin so of course the man has terrible taste in drinks.
My go to cocktail are aviations. Complete with the creme de violette if I can get it. that’s “too fruffy” and “not manly”… lets just say the look on his face was one of shock, horror and a rapidly-approaching-heart-attack, and I found it entirely satisfying to watch.
Other types of dementia too, I believe, although Alzheimer’s is most likely/common
I’d like to see the evidence her colleagues brought forth proving that she’s acting like this without rational cause beyond simply their witness testimony. The reason being that I’ve personally seen instances of elderly folks accused of acting like this and people insisting they have Alzheimer’s/dementia; however, when I’m with those same elderly people, they’re completely fine and it turns out those accusers were exaggerating the circumstances.
Another potential cause could be bad medicine balances/interactions. My wife’s grandpa had this happen a few years back, where he started suddenly acting like he had dementia and his mental state declined so rapidly that finally one doctor became suspicious at just how fast it was happening. Turns out, a couple of his doctors were giving him medications that had very bad interactions with each other, as well as too high of dosages which amplified the side effects. They balanced out his meds and monitored him inpatient for a couple weeks and he was back to normal. He’s finally starting to have early onset Alzheimer’s now (different from the dementia diagnosis back then), but for the last 5-6 years he’s been very coherent and functional living on his own.
Anyway, my point is: If her neurologist and another psychiatrist deemed her fine, then the court needs to have some rock solid proof that she’s acting very erratically. As an aside, I do support term limits for federal judges, so I don’t necessarily disagree that she should be forced to retire. I’d just like to know more context for this specific case.