A waste of time and money.
That’s how the judge for two metro Detroit judges painted a misconduct case tied to a 2019 dispute on Mackinac Island as he recommended that a state oversight body dismiss the professional charges against the two.
Retired judge Alexander Lipsey was appointed “master” over the Judicial Tenure Commission hearings against Detroit’s 36th District Judge Demetria Brue and Southfield’s 46th District Judge Debra Nance. He issued reports and recommendations on Oct. 14 to the commission, which will ultimately decide to either drop the matters or recommend censure, suspension or removal of the judges by the Michigan Supreme Court.
But that “petty” 2019 argument should never have reached this public stage, Lipsey said in a pointed take seemingly aimed at the commission.
“It is unclear to this Master why this matter resulted in a formal complaint, but it is clear the matter should have been resolved short of a formal hearing,” he said in his report regarding Brue. “All parties have been damaged by this proceeding.”
In the case of Brue, he said there was no basis to charge her with misconduct. He had previously recommended Nance’s case be dismissed before her hearing but later held it at the behest of the commission.
Lynn Helland, executive director of the Judicial Tenure Commission, said he could not comment outside of the proceedings.
Additionally, although he serves as general counsel for the commission, he said that once a complaint is filed, a separate attorney serves in that role. He directed the Free Press to that attorney for additional comment on Lipsey’s statements. That attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, Philip Thomas, a Grosse Pointe Farms-based attorney for Brue, lauded Lipsey’s filings as not only a victory for the jurist but “for all Michigan judges and those citizens who elect them.”
“(Lipsey) saw the formal complaint filed against Judge Brue for what it was — garbage,” he said, later adding: “His report represents a scathing evaluation of the meritless case brought by the Judicial Tenure Commission.”
Nance, who represented herself, and her other lawyers did not immediately provide or could not immediately be reached for comment.
Six years and thousands of dollars later
It began with a debate over a $23 bike rental.
The judges went to Mackinac Island for a conference in 2019, decided to take a bike ride, rented bikes from the Mackinac Island Bike Shop, determined there was an issue with one of the bikes and ended up in a heated situation with the shop owner, Ira Green.
During the course of the back and forth with shop staff, Nance asked for an accommodation, and Green and Brue momentarily, physically struggled over a receipt.
Police got involved. The state body tasked with investigating judges’ bad behavior got involved.
Accusations of racism emerged. Accusations emerged that the judges were using such accusations of racism as a shield. And over the course of several weeks in summer 2025, each judge had formal public hearings in front of Lipsey.
That’s rare. Most judicial misconduct cases are resolved behind closed doors.
The hearings saw a memory expert, lip readers, shop workers, cops, the judges and others parsing through the incident, homing in on interpretations of the phrases “free ride,” “didn’t give us the time of day,” and telling someone to stand at a curb.
Lipsey, who previously served on the 9th Circuit Court in Kalamazoo, summarized it this way in his report on Brue’s case:
“What began as a trivial dispute over a bicycle rental on Mackinac Island ended up mushrooming into a six-year conflict in front of the Judicial Tenure Commission. The parties have expended thousands of Dollars because a petty argument in which harsh words were spoken.”
Calling for dismissals
In his reports for both Brue and Nance, Lipsey tore apart the allegations against them.
The commission accused Brue and Nance of lying about the incident. Brue was also accused of pulling rank by saying she was a judge, falsely saying the owner assaulted her despite grabbing the receipt herself and failing to cooperate with misconduct investigators.
Brue argued that the shop owner was being racist in the encounter, which he testified was ridiculous. She said the receipt was hers, and the shop owner was taunting her with it. Nance said her alleged lies were based in part on personal perceptions.
Both said some so-called false statements were because they were questioned long after the incident and not given a proper chance to review the surveillance video.
Lipsey, in his reports, said there were credibility issues with one shop worker and with the shop owner’s reasoning for throwing out the receipt and printing a new one after the struggle.
Green could not be reached for comment, and a call to the bike shop indicated he no longer owned it.
Lipsey described Brue’s position that she was assaulted as “weak” but not misconduct.
She had reasonable knowledge that the receipt was hers and that Green pulling away as she tried to take it back was, indeed, him snatching it away, he said. In addition, Lipsey said it had not been proven more than likely that she told Green a phrase to the effect of: “Do you know what is now going to happen to you, a Caucasian man that’s found guilty of striking an African American female judge?”
More shots at the commissions
Lipsey also came at the commission for formally charging Brue with failing to cooperate.
By Lipsey’s description, Brue was asked by judicial investigators to answer questions. She responded to many questions but objected to some about attorney-client communications and asked why those were reasonable questions.
Commission attorneys formally charged her with not cooperating, then answered, by Lipsey’s telling.
Brue wasn’t obligated to “blindly” comply with their requests, Lipsey said.
As for Nance, she “correctly” noted “that trying to remember a minor scuffle months after it was supposedly resolved would be difficult under any circumstance,” Lipsey said.
The evidence also gave credence to her perception that an officer didn’t give the judges “the time of day,” despite the actual length of the conversation as captured on video.
Lipsey offered another pointed take aimed at the commission attorneys, known as disciplinary counsel:
“The bottom line is that Judge Nance was put in a position of trying to remember the details of an event she wished (and thought) was over,” Lipsey said. “She did not intentionally falsify her testimony (any more than Disciplinary Counsel intentionally falsified his verification in the original Complaint that Judge Nance was forced to appear under a subpoena).”
Commission attorneys had previously tried to add a statement to an amended complaint saying Nance was forced to testify through a subpoena. Commission attorneys wrote in another filing that the statement was in error and that it was not accurate.
Lipsey’s calls for dismissals and shots at the commission do not necessarily mark the end of Brue and Nance’s cases.
The next steps in the process are objections, responses and arguments in front of the commission itself, Helland confirmed.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Metro Detroit jurists’ misconduct cases should be tossed, judge tells oversight body
Reporting by Darcie Moran, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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