Judge Bronwyn C. Miller. Photo: J. Albert Diaz/ALM

A South Florida corporate litigant alleged the "appearance of judicial corruption," citing a relationship between opposing counsel and the attorney-husband of the trial judge, who now sits on the state appellate court.

VME Group International LLC filed a motion for the reversal of an opinion in the case stemming from a condominium dispute. It also sought the recusal of the jurist who wrote the opinion: Judge Bronwyn C. Miller, who has since risen to Florida's Third District Court of Appeal.

VME Group is litigating against The Grand Condominium Association and Stuart R. Kalb, president of the group's board of directors.

Miller was the initial trial judge on the underlying case in Miami-Dade Circuit Court before she rose to the appellate bench in December 2018.

VME Group alleges a conflict of interest between the judge, defense counsel Roniel Rodriguez IV, and the judge's husband Maury L. Udell, who is a civil litigator and partner at Beighley, Myrick, Udell & Lynne. It says the judge's husband teamed with Rodriguez—who represents the opposing side in the condo dispute—in an unrelated class action involving rum maker Bacardi.

Udell did not reply in request for comment, and neither did his wife. Judicial canons prohibit judges from publicly commenting on cases before them.

But Kalb, the association president, disagreed with allegations of impropriety.

"They're basically trying to use legal duress to get us to do what they want us to do," Kalb said. "They are spurious allegations against a lady who is an absolutely amazing jurist. I appeared in front of her a bunch of times as a litigant and sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but it was always fair, and she always applied the law."

Rodriguez, meanwhile, pointed out that he and the judge's husband, Udell, have also litigated against each other, representing opposing sides in other litigation. He also said the Bacardi litigation started months after the condo case.

"We definitely weren't representing the same party, and we definitely weren't really aligned," Rodriguez said. "That's why when I read it, I was a little confused. I figured they were just doing that for some type of legal advantage, or what I would call judicial bullying—where sometimes lawyers alter the truth somehow and blur the lines in their advantage."

'Lawyers are not supposed to say that'

The Third DCA panel denied VME Group's effort to undo the work of its judicial colleague.

"We were hoping the Third District would want to investigate this, but they had our motion and they summarily denied it," said VME Group's attorney Karen Jean Haas, of the Law Offices of Karen J. Haas in Miami. "The problem is it is a conflict of interest for the Third District to look at this. It is one of their own judges."

The motion highlighted that Miller entered orders in March 2018 and December 2018. These orders denied VME's motion for a temporary injunction. The motion claimed that as Miller made this decision, she did not recuse herself or disclose that Kalb's defense attorney was in a business relationship with the judge's husband.

In the court document, Haas said the judge and the defense counsel had the responsibility to disclose the relationship. She noted that during the appeal, none of the parties disclosed Rodriguez and Udell were co-counsel in a pending class action. In the court document, she said the class action could affect Miller's "household income."

"At some point, we discovered your front-page article, where this attorney was promoting a class action with co-counsel and who is the judge's spouse," Haas said. "Two days before that, the judge awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to that attorney. So two days later, he is doing a class action published on the front page of the Daily Business Review with the judge's husband. Nobody disclosed any of this to my client. That's when we started investigating."

In the court filing, Haas pointed to the Florida Statue Code of Judicial Conduct. There, Canon 3 says its purpose is to "promote confidence in the judiciary by avoiding even the appearance of impropriety whenever possible." To test that, "an objective, disinterested, lay observer fully informed of the facts underlying the grounds on which recusal was sought would entertain a significant doubt about the judge's impartiality."

The motion argued the appearance of a financial conflict of interest is all that matters, and not whether an actual one is proved.

"This is about the appearance of judicial corruption," Haas said. "But lawyers are not supposed to say that."