The Judicial Inquiry Commission has considered your request for an opinion concerning
whether under the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics a judge is disqualified from sitting
in a proceeding based on certain circumstances. It appears from the facts presented
that the judge is a member of a family partnership engaged in the rental of commercial
property. A few days after the judge presided over the trial of a case, one of the
lawyers appearing before him filed a petition in bankruptcy on behalf of a tenant and
named the partnership as a creditor. The judge believes that a draft of the judgment in
the case he tried was probably prepared before the bankruptcy petition was filed,
however, the judgment has not been signed by the court.