COP VS JUDGE DUSTUP MOVES FROM PARKING LOT TO COURT

The Shreveport Times

A 2009 courthouse parking lot scuffle between a police officer and a sitting judge—after the judge was stopped for not wearing his seatbelt—has now spilled into the Red River district court with dueling lawsuits.

Coushatta, Louisiana is a small community, but even so on June 29, 2009, there were two local residents who had not yet made each other's acquaintance: Trooper Eric Schonfarber and District Judge Lewis O. Sams—whom Schonfarger pulled over for not wearing his seatbelt.

The judge admitted he was not wearing his seatbelt and asked that the trouper write him the ticket so he could be on his way. But when the officer asked the judge where he worked, he then demanded to see His Honor’s judicial badge—which the judge declined to show the trouper.

At this point the respective narratives of cop and judge wildly diverge.

Trouper Schonfarber claimed that the judge was out of control and had to be restrained. Judge Sams asserted that Schonfarber threatened him with a taser pressed up against his chest. Both agree that the cop-on-judge confrontation became physical.

Things escalated from there, with Schonfarber being charged with assault and facing administrative discipline in his own department. (The state attorney general later dismissed all criminal charges at Judge Sams’s request.)

Now, 12 months later, it is apparent that time does NOT heal all wounds.

In the apparent hope that state trouper and judge would each let the other’s respective one-year statute of limitations to sue expire, they have now sued each other on the last day to do.

The judge has sued for assault, and the trouper for damage to his reputation—alleging that Sams conspired with a former state representative, Taylor Townsend, and at least one "high-ranking state police official at Troop G in Bossier" to cast him in "unfavorable light."

Of course, how hard is it to cast a dumb-ass trouper who would escalate a small-town courthouse parking-lot seatbelt ticket into a physical confrontation with a judge (in Louisiana no less) in an “unfavorable light”?

Stay tuned for round II in the cop vs judge dueling lawsuits.

Read more: Judge, trooper sue each other over 2009 traffic stop, arrest