HONESDALE — Jessica Ellis won the race for magisterial district judge in Wayne County’s District 22-3-02 this spring. She takes the bench in January.

During her campaign, she sat down with The River Reporter for a candidate profile published May 7. She talked about her qualifications, her roots in the community, her plans for the office. She also took a shot at other magisterial judges — the ones who try to keep private practices going while serving on the bench.

“I can tell you from my personal experience I can never get them on the phone if I have cases with them,” Ellis told the paper. “They are always very late in filing things, and it is very difficult to resolve cases with them.”

Read that again.

Ellis — an attorney, an assistant district attorney, a former court administrator — said she’s been trying to call judges to resolve cases. And her complaint wasn’t that the calls were improper. Her complaint was that the judges didn’t pick up.

What the Rules Say

Pennsylvania’s rules on this are not ambiguous. The Code of Civility says communication with a judge “on any matter pending before the judge, without notice to opposing counsel, is strictly prohibited.” Rule 2.9 of the standards governing magisterial district judges says MDJs “shall not initiate, permit, or consider ex parte communications” concerning pending matters. The only exception is for scheduling, administrative matters, or emergencies — and even then, all parties must be notified.

“Resolving cases” is not scheduling. It’s not administrative. It’s the substantive outcome that ex parte rules exist to protect.

She Knows Better

Ellis knows the rules. She’s practiced law in twelve counties across northeastern Pennsylvania. She’s been an ADA in Wayne County since 2022. She served as district court administrator for the 44th Judicial District, overseeing MDJ offices in Wyoming and Sullivan counties. She’s the vice president of the Wayne County Bar Association.

So what was she talking about?

Maybe she misspoke. Maybe “resolve cases” meant something different in context — scheduling hearings, coordinating paperwork, the administrative grind of moving files through the system. Maybe she was describing her frustrations as a court administrator trying to reach judges she was supposed to oversee, not as an attorney with matters before them.

Or maybe she was describing exactly what it sounds like: an attorney calling judges directly to work out cases, and getting frustrated when they didn’t answer.

No One Asked

The River Reporter didn’t follow up. The quote ran without comment. Ellis won the primary three weeks later, sweeping both party nominations.

She’ll be sworn in next month. Her husband, Brendan Ellis, will still be prosecuting cases out of the same courthouse. The DA’s office hasn’t said how it plans to handle that overlap.

Now there’s a second question nobody’s answered: What did Wayne County’s incoming judge mean when she said she couldn’t reach other judges to resolve cases — and why did she expect them to take the call?

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