Robin Jean Davis

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Joseph Albright Brent Benjamin Robin Jean Davis "Spike" Maynard Larry Starcher
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West Virginia on Judgepedia

Robin Jean Davis is a justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court. She was elected as a Democrat in a partisan election in 1996; her current term expires in 2012.

Legal Education and Experience

Davis received her B.S. from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1978, and her M.A. and J.D. from West Virginia University in 1982.

Before her election to the Supreme Court of Appeals, she practiced law at the six-person law firm of Segal and Davis, L.C., concentrating in the field of employee benefits and domestic relations.

In 1991, the Supreme Court of Appeals appointed her to the seven-person West Virginia Board of Law Examiners, on which she served until 1996. In 1996, she was elected to the Supreme Court of Appeals to an unexpired term. She was re-elected in November 2000. Justice Davis served as chief justice in 1998, 2002 and 2006

As chief justice, she accomplished a number of initiatives. These initiatives include: the Workers' Compensation Mediation Program; the expansion of parent education programs; Rules on Mass Litigation; the expansion of technology for the "Courtroom of the Future," including the video initial appearance pilot project; and the creation of the West Virginia Trial Court Rules. Justice Davis is the most senior member of the Supreme Court of Appeals. Justice Robin Jean Davis has also authored several works published in the West Virginia Law Review, including:

• "A Tribute to Franklin D. Cleckley: A Compendium of Essential Legal Principles from his Opinions as a Justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals"
• "A Tribute to Thomas E. McHugh: An Encyclopedia of Legal Principles from his Opinions as a Justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals"
• "An Analysis of the Development of Admitting Expert Testimony in Federal Courts and the Impact of that Development on West Virginia Jurisprudence"
• She is the co-author with Louis J. Palmer, Jr. of "Workers' Compensation Litigation in West Virginia: Assessing the Impact of the Rule of Liberality and the Need for Fiscal Reform."
• She is the co-author with Justice Cleckley and Mr. Palmer of the Litigation Handbook on West Virginia Rules of Civil Procedure.

Awards, associations

In 1993, she became the first lawyer in West Virginia to be inducted into the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

In 2000, Justice Davis received the Distinguished West Virginian Award from Governor Cecil H. Underwood.

Campaign contributors

Personal injury lawyers make up Justice Davis's largest source of campaign contributions.^[1]

Newspaper makes issue of wealth

Robert S. Greenberger of the Wall Street Journal indicates that Davis and her husband, Scott Segal, a plaintiff's attorney who "focuses on mega-lawsuits against corporations," live in "a 20,000-square-foot, $5 million estate in the hills across from Charleston's gold capitol dome, where they hold an annual black-tie Christmas party that has been featured in Southern Living magazine."^[2] Moreover, Greenberger notes that "their career paths have raised controversy in a state where the average income was $27,982 last year, lower than all but seven other states."^[3]

Greenberger suggests that Justice Davis is biased against companies:

In July 1999, while Davis was a justice, the state Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs who claimed possible exposure to toxic substances could collect huge sums from corporate defendants for lifetime medical testing - without having to prove it was likely they ever would get ill from the exposure.^[4]

Greenberger, who playfully asserts that Davis "has helped make West Virginia almost heaven for trial lawyers - including her husband," points out that "West Virginia's high court didn't invent such 'medical monitoring,' as it is called, but the ruling was groundbreaking. It permits, for example, lump-sum awards, with no strings on how the money is spent, which also potentially increases how quickly the lawyers involved see their portion of the award."^[5]

According to Greenberger, accusations have arisen that Segal benefits from his wife's rulings:

A few months before the ruling, Segal had become an attorney in an unrelated medical-monitoring lawsuit in West Virginia for people who used fen-phen, a controversial diet-drug cocktail. The state Supreme Court's ruling, which affirmed and expanded medical monitoring, cleared the path for similar suits. The fen-phen class action eventually was settled for an undisclosed amount and, as is standard practice, Segal's firm, along with others involved, received a piece of the award. Shortly after the high court endorsed medical-monitoring awards, Segal became involved in a suit seeking such monitoring on behalf of "healthy smokers," those who haven't yet contracted a tobacco-related disease. The lawsuit could include as many as 500,000 West Virginians, and claims could reach $2.7 billion. Even among Charleston's insular business community, the Davis-Segal connection on medical monitoring raised some eyebrows.^[6]

Finally, Greenberger suggests that Davis and Segal's conduct seems questionable under West Virginia's Code of Judicial Conduct, which states that "judges should disqualify themselves from ruling in cases if, among other reasons, their spouse or any other family member 'has an economic interest' in the legal matter before the court."^[7]

Davis and husband respond

Segal says he finds suggestions that his law firm benefits from his wife's rulings "tremendously offensive," adding that "my wife hands down a lot of opinions I don't agree with."

Davis responds that "I have been very diligent and careful about disqualifying myself from any case involving my husband's law firm." But she says she couldn't do her job if she skipped every case in which her husband might become involved. "There's not a personal-injury case that comes before this court that at some point, some time, couldn't affect my family," she says.

Davis adds that "there was no reason" to recuse herself from the medical-monitoring issue because her husband wasn't involved in the case before her court - though at the time he was an attorney in the fen-phen suit.^[8]

External links

• A Message From Chief Justice Robin Jean Davis (1997)

References