Occasionally, callers inquire about the adequacy of grounds for recusing a judge who has ruled against them.

They imagine that the judge in their case must be biased against them – because they didn’t achieve a flat-out victory across the board – no matter the pertinent facts or the applicable law.

Unfortunately for the callers, that is not anywhere near enough to have a judge recused. What is?

In a divorce case heard in London, a Saudi sheik owned the divorcing couple’s marital home. Because of disputes over the home, the sheik appeared in court as a witness.

The presiding trial judge made several inappropriate remarks targeting the sheik’s ethnicity, such as references to his “flying carpet” and “fasts”.

On appeal, the trial judge was ordered to recuse himself from hearing the rest of the case. The appellate court held that the trial judge’s attempts at “humor” were actually “thoroughly bad jokes”.

And those so-called thoroughly bad ethnic jokes demonstrated sufficient bias to furnish adequate grounds for recusal.

Read more in this International Herald Tribune article: UK judge disqualified from divorce case after ‘flying carpet’ remark about Saudi.

Dad has 4 hours of visitation every other week, supervised by the child’s grandmother.

An old Arizona statute allows judges to award visitation to grandparents.

The grandmother here was awarded visitation of her own.

Later, Mom gives notice of her intent to move out of state to care for an ailing relative.

Another, newer, Arizona statute allows a noncustodial parent to object to the custodial parent relocating their children to another state.

Dad apparently did not object to the relocation under that statute.

Instead, Grandma, in essence, did, by seeking to block the relocation, by relying on that statute.

An intermediate Arizona appeals court said the statute blocking relocation was only available to the noncustodial parent, not to grandparents.

The grandmother’s attorney intends to appeal to the state’s highest court, with the argument that this ruling allows the custodial parent to thwart grandparent visitation rights simply by relocating.

A ruling elevating grandparent visitation rights would be against the weight of federal and state court rulings entered after the passage of the grandparent visitation statute in Arizona.

Read more in this East Valley [Phoenix] Tribune article: Ruling could affect grandparents’ visitation.