By Noreen Marcus, FloridaBulldog.org
Four women are demanding that the state Attorney General and the Florida Commission on Human Relations seek to punish Palm Beach Circuit Judge Darren Shull for gender discrimination.
Calling themselves Mothers Against Court Abuse, the women filed a joint complaint with exhibits seeking to compel an investigation and the enforcement of Florida’s civil rights law. They also want Judge Shull “immediately” removed from proceedings involving women.
Further, they want new Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to file a civil lawsuit, presumably against Shull and/or the Palm Beach Circuit Court, seeking damages totaling more than $4.4 million for “engaging in a pattern of reprehensible discriminatory behaviors” and causing each woman “immeasurable mental pain and anguish.”
The four women are, or were, parties in divorce and child-custody matters before Shull, who runs the family division of Palm Beach County courts. A longtime criminal defense lawyer, he entered the judiciary when Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to the court in 2022.
In a few short years, Shull has been the subject of several ethics complaints to the Judicial Qualifications Commission. None has resulted in charges.
Also, Shull is named repeatedly in pleas to appellate judges to disqualify him for bias. The appeals follow his refusal to drop the cases of women who say they have reason to fear he’ll treat them unfairly.
So far, Shull is pretty much unscathed. Once, though, the Fourth District Court of Appeal ordered him to drop an alimony case because he’d approved a man’s requests after hearing only his side. With Shull’s blessing, the man would have forced mediation upon, and wrung attorney fees out of, his surprised ex-wife.
“Nothing is more dangerous and destructive of the impartiality of the judiciary than a one-sided communication between a judge and a single litigant,” 4th DCA Judges Mark Klingensmith, Spencer Levine and Alan Forst explained, quoting the Florida Supreme Court, when they removed Shull from Erren v. Marin in March 2023.
COMPLAINT ISN’T ‘OUTLANDISH’
The decision in Erren v. Marin predates the formation of Mothers Against Court Abuse. But the women’s complaints suggest that one-sided proceedings are not unusual for Shull.
The women allege he ignored their rights in order to favor men even when doing so left their children unprotected.
“Despite our repeated efforts to address these issues through appropriate channels, Mr. Shull’s discriminatory and retaliatory conduct has persisted, creating a hostile environment in which we legitimately fear participating in legal proceedings,” says their joint complaint filed last week with the Attorney General’s office.
They claim Shull violated the Florida Civil Rights Act of 1992, Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“This isn’t some outlandish complaint for preferential treatment,” said Nanea Marcial, unofficial leader of the ad hoc Mothers Against Court Abuse. “We are simply asking for our basic constitutional rights to be upheld, the right to have a fair and objective judge and basic hearings to present evidence and facts in an open and objective setting.”
Asked for his response, Palm Beach County courts’ Chief Judge Glenn Kelley wrote, “This office does not comment on active complaints of any kind against a judge.” If a party to a case before Shull wants to try to disqualify him, Kelley said, court rules require the party to file a motion with him. If Shull denies the motion, the party can ask the 4th DCA to reverse his decision, as it did in Erren v. Marin.
Shull did not respond to an email seeking comment. Previously he noted that judges are prohibited from discussing pending cases.
FRANCIS-SHULL CONNECTIONS
Three of the four women have not only Shull in common, but also Justice Renatha Francis.
She presided over their cases before joining the Florida Supreme Court on Sept. 1, 2022. Initially, Francis served on the Steering Committee on Families and Children in the Court.
Shull and Francis have a personal connection: Francis’s late husband Phillip Fender was one of the judicial-nominating commissioners who short-listed Shull for his court appointment.
Based on their experience with Francis, Angela Bentrim, Renee Weaver and Andrea Spleha say that she, like Shull, disrespected them and tended to rule for their ex-husbands.
“I felt ambushed and demeaned [by Francis], like I do now with Judge Shull,” Spleha wrote in a sworn affidavit she submitted with a judicial ethics complaint against Shull.
She recalled Francis screaming at her and setting a hearing so quickly, “I had no time to hire a lawyer.” Ethics regulators rejected Spleha’s Shull complaint in a form letter.
Spleha claims no one prevented her ex-husband from exposing their teenage son to a sexual predator. She asked Shull to recuse himself from her case – and he did nothing with her request, court records show.
PICK-UP ORDER PUT DOWN
A month later, Shull automatically lost his authority over her case, yet held a hearing with only the lawyer for Spleha’s ex-husband, according to the records. Then the judge ordered police to pick up the teenager and transport him to his father.
Spleha’s counsel took emergency action and police stood down; they would not enforce the pick-up order. Eventually the case went to another judge who spiked Shull’s unexecuted order, court records indicate.
Shull’s power to rule in Angela Bentrim’s case ended when he granted – without explanation – her third recusal motion. On his way out, he fined Bentrim and her consultant, Delray Beach lawyer Margherita Downey, about $5,000 in sanctions for their behavior, court records show.
Bentrim, a dog walker and boarder, told Florida Bulldog her ex-husband, who owned an ornamental fountain company, owed her about $90,000 in unpaid court-ordered alimony. He wanted Shull to reduce his $1,750-a-month alimony payment.
Bentrim and Downey had tangled repeatedly with Francis. She sanctioned Bentrim for failing to attend a hearing even though Francis’s staff hadn’t notified Bentrim the hearing was set.
Francis abruptly dropped Bentrim’s case when Downey asked the Florida Supreme Court to accept it for review. Francis claimed to be responding to an “emergency” no one else recognized. Her action mooted the appeal; shortly thereafter, DeSantis tapped her for the high court.
Two Mothers Against Court Abuse, Renee Weaver and Nanea Marcial, remain on Shull’s docket. If he’s inclined to rule against them, he can.
SHULL STILL HAS TWO WOMEN’S CASES
In 2022 Weaver took her two sons to her family in New York because, she wrote in court documents, her ex-husband had refused to pay the water bill, repair the air- conditioner or eradicate household mold.
Her sons have medical problems that are triggered by mold and substandard living conditions, Weaver told Florida Bulldog. They wound up back with their father in South Florida and “they kept calling me, crying,” she said.
“Shull has shown a consistent pattern of violating my due process rights, discriminating against me as a woman, and blindly favoring the father, even if it means putting children in danger,” Weaver wrote in her complaint to the Attorney General.
“If something happens to my children, it will directly be Shull’s fault,” she wrote.
Marcial also relocated her two sons – to New Hampshire, where she moved for work. Responding to an order from Shull, she had relatives drop off the boys at their father’s home in Miami-Dade County on July 8, 2023.
Soon after arriving, they ran away. Within hours police found and took them to Marcial, who said they were afraid of their father, David Custin.
In court documents Custin accused Marcial of “conspiring” with their sons and “orchestrating an opportunity for the boys to run away.” The incident sparked an escalation in the war of Custin versus Marcial that continues today.
DUELING SUPPORT ORDERS
Custin is winning. Shull threatened Marcial with two years in prison for violating the terms of her probation. She was on probation for moving their sons out of Florida.
Following a trial in November that Marcial says Shull held without her, he awarded Custin full parental custody, took away Marcial’s visitation rights for 18 months, and ordered her to pay Custin child support.
Meanwhile, Custin owes her more than $30,000 in child expenses, Marcial said. And she won a separate Florida Department of Revenue action that put him on the hook for $5,100 in unpaid child support, she said.
Marcial accused Shull of favoring Custin because both men are beholden to the DeSantis administration – Shull for his court appointment and Custin, a political consultant, because he’s friends with Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez (just-named interim president of Florida International University) and she and DeSantis are his clients.
If Mothers Against Court Abuse strikes out with state officials, the women are determined to take their complaints about Shull to the federal justice system, Marcial said.
“How much more suffering do domestic abuse victims need to endure before the light shines on judges operating with complete freedom to ignore laws and blatantly discriminate with no consequences?” she asked.
“We have nowhere else to go and no choice left but to unite and fight for the justice we all deserve.”
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