Shea Emerges As Top Judge Candidate, by Thomas B. Scheffey, Connecticut Law Tribune, December 16, 2011

Shea Emerges As Top Judge Candidate

By Thomas B. Scheffey
Connecticut Law Tribune
December 16, 2011

http://www.ctlawtribune.com/getarticle.aspx?ID=40835

Michael P. Shea is believed to be a top contender for the U.S. District Court judgeship being vacated by Christopher Droney, who has been elevated to the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Some of Connecticut’s legal congnoscenti are keenly watching the nomination process to fill the seat of former U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney, recently elevated to the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The consensus to date has Day Pitney partner Michael P. Shea, of West Hartford, as the current favorite.

If experience with tough cases is a job requirement, Shea can check that off. “The thornier the better,” could be his motto. He had good preparation from his days as a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1993 and 1994. Unlike the other 11 Circuits, as noted recently by Yale Law teacher and New York Times writer Linda Greenhouse, the D.C. Circuit is the federal circuit, and its cases are “dense, tough and vitally important.”

Shea’s recent caseload has gravitated toward matters fitting that description. Before joining Day Pitney in 1998, he practiced antitrust law in Washington and in Brussel, Belgium — including European antitrust law.

More recently, he’s handled the brief writing in the defense of St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, which is accused of failing to adequately oversee pedophile doctor George Reardon, the now-deceased endocrinologist who left pornographic photos of hundreds of child patients in the woodwork of his West Hartford home.

Shea’s summary judgment motions, and oral arguments supporting them, greatly narrowed the number of civil counts the hospital was facing. That matter is currently Connecticut’s most complex ongoing tort case.

Shea is the chair of Day Pitney’s appellate practice group, arguing regularly in Connecticut and New York appellate courts. From a purely selfish standpoint, Day Pitney tax practitioner Rob Siegel would rather not have Shea leave.

“There’s all sorts of ways in today’s environment to lose talented lawyers,” he said, adding one of them is to see them rise to the bench. Just last week, a partner in Day Pitney’s New York office, Edgardo Ramos was confirmed as a federal judge in New York’s Southern District, and is scheduled to take the bench early next year.

Fellow appellate lawyer and West Hartford neighbor Wesley W. Horton, of Horton, Shields & Knox, said he was pleased that Shea was apparently moving up in the process. Horton, who’s also a historian of Connecticut’s courts, is also an unabashed fan of Shea’s father, the late Supreme Court Justice David Shea.

One of the founding members of Connecticut’s Supreme Court Historical Society, Shea currently serves as its treasurer.

Waterbury lawyer James Robertson, of Carmody & Torrance, has known Shea as a courtroom adversary, as co-counsel, and in his role as a special master in the complex St. Francis matter, which has as many as 150 plaintiffs.

“He was my co-counsel in Travelers v. Metropolitan, which is now one of the leading cases on what’s required in a class action suit,” he said.

Robertson has for the past year served as Waterbury Superior Court Judge Dan Shaban’s special master, handling discovery disputes between the parties. In that role he’s written some 20 decisions, sometimes ruling on Shea’s team in a judge-like manner.

“I’ve seen him in all three capacities,” Robertson said. “He’s excellent.”

Calm Amid The Storm

Shea has found himself in the midst of some alarming legal controversies, such as a 2009 bill that was viewed by the Roman Catholic hierarchy as an attempt to undermine its authority. The bill, a response to the fiscal harm caused to churches with inadequate financial oversight, would have given Roman Catholic churches or congregations the power to incorporate with a board of lay members, relegating the archbishop or his designee to serve only as an ex-officio member. The Bridgeport Diocese rallied the faithful, and in short order the state capitol was mobbed by protesters. Some carried signs targeting lawmakers with international “No” symbols over their faces. Mounted police kept order.

Into that fray stepped Michael Shea, along with other lawyers testifying against the proposed bill. Unlike some others, Shea’s comments were temperate and lawyerly, underscoring the unconstitutionality of the proposed bill, but without demagoguery. Bridgeport Bishop William E. Lori inspired the crowds outside, comparing the bill’s sponsors to the anti-Catholic Know-nothings of the nineteenth century, eliciting long boos.

Shea, inside at a packed hearing room, stuck to unemotional First Amendment analysis. He’d actually studied the pages of corporation law that cover five specific denominations, allowing them the power to incorporate. Regardless of the denomination, the statutes defer to each church’s internal governing structure, Shea said. Furthermore, the proposals would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. He sounded calmly authoritative, but never played on emotional themes.

In large part, Shea’s clients have been large corporations or organizations powerful enough to pay their legal bills. Not always. In 2006, he jumped into a time-sensitive case, pro bono, in which a Terryville woman had returned home with her children from Italy after fleeing an abusive relationship. Unexpectedly, she was served with papers that said she’d violated the Hague Convention’s agreements on international child abduction.

The mother’s legal aid lawyer was over his head, but Shea and an associate threaded complicated case law from various states on this issue. They presented 33 pages of findings to establish she never intended to become a resident of Italy, and that the father had agreed to the trip. District Judge Robert Chatigny agreed, and mother and children remained together.

It’s not certain that Shea will soon be in a position to make rulings like that. A spokeswoman for Sen. Joseph P. Lieberman’s office said the choice of district judge is in the hands of President Barack Obama. Shea did not return a call for comment. His partner at Day Pitney, tax lawyer Siegel, was torn:

“As a citizen, we’ll be benefited, but as a partner, I’ll certainly miss him, if this happens.”