Former judges’ family feud is no game. One former judge is serving a suspension
When a feud between former old-school Broward County judges turned into modern keyboard tough-guy talk, it sent a current judge to the police and, eventually, one of the elder former judges to suspension.
The 45-day suspension that began Saturday belongs to Hollywood attorney Jay Spechler, once a Broward County Court judge and now in private practice. According to Spechler’s consent judgment and guilty plea, Spechler put a threatening post on the JAABlog.com courthouse blog about current Broward County Judge Michael Lynch and his father, former Broward County judge Thomas Lynch.
That violated Florida Bar professional standards. Thus, the suspension.
As many feuds with deep feeling do, this one started as a close friendship. Spechler was a Broward judge from 1989-2008.
“Throughout that time, he maintained a close personal relationship with now-retired Broward County Judge Thomas Lynch and his family,” Spechler’s consent judgment reads. “The families were closely entwined in a positive relationship. During that time, retired Judge Thomas Lynch’s son, Michael Lynch, was elected to the Broward bench.”
That was in 2016. Thomas Lynch left the bench in February 2017. Where the good vibes between the Lynches and Spechler dissolved isn’t clear, but soon there were “highly offensive anonymous statements” on JAABlog.com that ripped into Spechler, his wife and their children.
Spechler believed the Lynch family was responsible, a conclusion that his guilty plea admits lacked any basis other than suspicion. Michael Lynch denied making any of the posts that riled Spechler. Nonetheless, the former judge fired back in June 2018 with much more feeling than judgment.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported the post as saying, “Your intimidation and scare tactics will come to a screeching halt, just like your pathetic, miserable lives. Waiting is the hardest part.”
The Sun Sentinel says Spechler told Bar investigators he was referring to the careers of Lynch and political consultant Michael Ahearn., not their actual lives.
