Judge refers to alleged link between defamation case and lawyer's suspicious death
A Dallas judge assigned extra security after a lawyer’s suspicious death recused himself on Wednesday in a defamation suit filed by the lawyer against a litigant in a previous matter.
Judge Eric Moye said in court that he was stepping aside because one of the defamation defendants had “implications in the death” of the lawyer, Ira Tobolowsky, report the Dallas Morning News Scoop Blog, the Jewish Daily Forward and 5NBCDFW. No arrests have been made, however, and the defamation defendant has not been accused of any crime.
Tobolowsky was found dead in a “suspicious” garage fire on Friday. Previous coverage indicated that Moye received extra security because he was presiding over a “high profile trial” that raised safety concerns.
Tobolowsky had previously represented the defamation defendant’s mother in a dispute over a family trust, according to the Scoop Blog. Tobolowsky’s defamation suit claimed the defendant used “intentional lies, fraud, defamatory statements, and ‘dirty tricks’ ” to get Tobolowsky to stop representing the mother.
