Lawrence F. Army Jr. Admonished Retired

Lawrence F. Army Jr., a former Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court, paid a $4,000 civil penalty to the State Ethics Commission for violating the state's conflict of interest law. While filling in at Essex Probate and Family Court in December 2022, Army presided over a divorce case in which a previous judge had already ordered the marital home sold. When the parties couldn't agree on sale terms, Army appointed his own father, Lawrence Army Sr., as Special Master to handle the sale — setting his father's fee at $450 an hour. The appointment violated a Supreme Judicial Court rule requiring such fee-generating appointments to come from a court-maintained list of eligible people in order; Army's father wasn't just out of order on that list, his name wasn't on it at all. The court's First Justice vacated Army's appointment in January 2023 and named a different Special Master, meaning Army's father never actually collected any fee. Army admitted to the violation and waived his right to a public hearing as part of the disposition agreement with the Ethics Commission.