One in a series on local judges.
by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
Hugh Carithers is an easy-going judge. He calls himself middle-of-the-road politically and has a relaxed, collected demeanor and a gray goatee. Some would say that relaxed is only one of the prerequisites for being able to handle the division of family court where Carithers sits currently as part of the normal Circuit Court rotation. Patient, understanding and tolerant would be some others, but you get the picture.
Anyone who is familiar with a judge in this town knows that no one requests family court. It is the division that makes them want to pull their hair out, the one that judges are cooperative enough to rotate in and out of at the behest of Chief Judge Donald Moran.
About family court, Carithers says, “I’m never surprised but I’m frequently amazed.” Allegedly, there’s one judge who does request family court, but no one has yet to admit to it.
Three weeks ago Carithers presided over a case in which two divorced parents brought each other to court to decide which private school their daughter should attend. The father, a physician, and the mother, a psychologist, couldn’t agree.
“These people had so many interpersonal issues that they would rather have a total stranger decide where their child should go to school,” said Carithers. “They set themselves up to be at the mercy of my own personal biases and preconceived notions. It’s unbelievable.”
Then there’s the other side: the all-too-common irresolvable conflicts that come before Carithers and the other judges in family court.
“You know that sending someone to jail won’t help. They’ve got a cocaine addiction, they can’t pay child support, they’re going to lose their house and there’s nothing anybody can really do about it,” said Carithers. “We [judges] are not social engineers and it’s frustrating when you can’t fix every problem.”
The problem is, Carithers is tragically suited for it. The son of two doctors, Carithers spent most of his 18-and-a-half years as a lawyer in Jacksonville in family law. He started at the beach at the firm of Shepherd, Fletcher, Hand and Adams, handling family, criminal and civil rights cases. In 1982, Carithers went to work at Hand, Drew, Carithers, Showalter and Mercier. He practiced some business law — he represented Publix and other companies large and small — but concentrated mostly on family law. He’s one of only a handful of board certified family lawyers in the state.
Carithers was a sociology major at Washington & Lee University before joining the Navy as an overseas courier.
“I wanted to join the Navy and see the world,” said Carithers. “And also do something besides just lie around since there was this war [Vietnam].” He did see San Diego, Alameda, Calif. and Bremerton, Wash. before the Navy, “in their infinite wisdom,” stationed him in Mayport.
But soon after training in 1970, Carithers left for a nine-month tour in Vietnam as a courier, carrying classified materials from one base to another.
“It was the kind of thing where you were handcuffed to a briefcase and a .45 pistol,” he said. But he did go all over the world: Vietnam, Rio, Sydney, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines.
“One night there was a rocket attack at one of the temporary bases where we were sleeping. We had heard that the enemy was notoriously bad at aiming but they would lob mortar shells over the mountain range to try and disrupt the runways. We had to get in a bunker. That was a close call,” he recalled.
After the Navy, Carithers went straight to law school at the University of Florida where he said he maintained a strict policy of “no studying past five p.m.” He said that as a litigator, he always felt that, philosophically, he could see both sides, “which wasn’t necessarily a very good quality for a litigator.” In 1993, a vacancy opened in Circuit Court and Carithers sent an application to Gov. Lawton Chiles.
He spent his requisite year in juvenile and has since served in all divisions of the Circuit Court. He has been an administrative assistant in the family law division and sat as an associate judge on the First District Court of Appeals. He has served on the executive committee of the Conference of Circuit Court Judges and as chair of its civil section.
Carithers is also a teacher. He is a member of the Florida Court Education Council and the faculty of the College of Advanced Judicial Studies. This fall, he will serve as dean of the Civil College there.
“I got elected because I wasn’t in the room when they said, ‘Who wants to be dean?’“ He also serves on the Florida Family Law Rules Committee.
Carithers and his family live near the beach and they love to travel. His oldest daughter, Dawn, 30, teaches middle school in San Francisco. His other daughter, Caroline, is a junior at Episcopal High School. His wife Kathy is a former court reporter.
On the day of this interview, he was preparing for a family law seminar organized by the Jacksonville Bar Association, part of which he was responsible for teaching. “It’s just a little snippet on contempt of court,” said Carithers. “Not that any attorneys ever have a problem with that.”