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Monday, October 31, 2011
Ind. Law - "Indiana Lawyer Who Started His Legal Career as a 17-Year-Old Judge Gets the Guinness World Record"
Greenwood attorney Marc L. Griffin is featured in an ABAJournal blog entry this morning by Debra Cassens Weiss. Some quotes:
Griffin was an enterprising 17-year-old high school graduate in 1974 when he persuaded county commissioners to appoint him to fill a vacancy for justice of the peace. Griffin later won re-election to the job that included presiding over some civil and criminal cases, as well as performing weddings. “I was marrying people, throwing people in jail, and fining people,” he recalls. * * *Speeding tickets were a big part of Griffin’s docket because the highway speed limit had recently dropped from 70 to 55 miles an hour. He held court at all hours of the night when police needed authority to lock up suspected domestic abusers. But it was the weddings he performed and an attorney general’s opinion that garnered national news coverage. Griffin was marrying people even though he was himself too young to marry without parental consent, a fact noted by critics.
The state attorney general opined that Griffin was too young to hold office. An Associated Press “fun-sy” story reporting on the decision questioned whether the people Griffin had married were “living in sin” because their weddings were illegal, Griffin says. The legal dispute was put to rest when a circuit court found Griffin qualified to hold office, paving the way for a short-lived judicial career.
The state eliminated justice of the peace courts a year or two later. Griffin finished his education and got a law degree from Indiana University School of Law. He has a niche practice representing banks and insurance companies that obtain liens on properties through tax sales.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 31, 2011 08:47 AM
Posted to Indiana Law