Justice Sanders, pay your own bills

JUSTICE Richard Sanders of the Washington Supreme Court crosses an ethical line by seeking to benefit from a ruling in which he participated.

The ruling itself was good. It was the case of Yousoufian v. Sims, in which King County kept Armen Yousoufian waiting for almost four years to see documents about Qwest Field. He should have had them within a few days.

Sanders, who wrote the ruling opinion, rightly said the delay was "grossly negligent noncompliance" with the law and that the lower court's penalty of $15 a day against King County was too low. "A flea bite," Sanders wrote, "does not deter an elephant."

Sanders might have recused himself, however, because in the Court of Appeals he had his own public-records case on a different matter. Ethically, Sanders had a choice: either make the ruling or benefit from it. He chose to do both, asking the Court of Appeals to increase his claim on the state by $500,000.

The appeals judges have wisely declined to rule on his request, and if Sanders' colleagues on the Supreme Court have their wits about them, they will do the same. Sanders has handed them a mess, and it is not swabbed up by giving the $500,000 to his lawyer, as he has suggested.

To pay a man's lawyer is as much a favor to him as to pay his car mechanic, or his grocer. Ethics deserves closer attention than this.