By ART BUKOWSKI
TRAVERSE CITY -- Court officials contend there won't be lasting ramifications after they fixed an "oversight" involving a magistrate who wasn't approved to perform her duties.
Pam Blue, chief probation officer for 86th District Court, has served as a Grand Traverse County weekend magistrate for about three years, court administrator Carol Stocking said. Blue performs marriages and sets bonds in that role.
Court officials recently discovered Blue, a Leelanau County resident, wasn't authorized to act as a Grand Traverse County magistrate without the approval of the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners. Law states a person must be approved by the board of commissioners in the county in which they're registered to vote to act as magistrate, Stocking said.
Stocking this month obtained approval from Leelanau commissioners, she said.
"It was just an oversight on my part ... we certainly followed all the steps we were supposed to, it was just an honest mistake," Stocking said.
Stocking and 86th District Chief Judge John D. Foresman said they checked with James Covault, the regional administrator for the State Court Administrator's Office, to make sure Blue's past magistrate actions were legally binding.
"As far as we're concerned, everything is okay," Foresman said.
Covault and Blue did not return calls for comment. SCAO spokeswoman Marcia McBrien said such mix-ups often are corrected by a judicial order of nunc pro tunc, which in Latin means "now for then."
"An order of nunc pro tunc gives a court's action retroactive legal effect ... such orders are most commonly used to correct past clerical or technical errors by the court," McBrien wrote in an e-mail.
Covault told Foresman he needn't issue such an order, Foresman said. State law indicates marriages are legally binding if performed by someone who appears to have the authority to perform the marriage, Foresman said.
"The statute basically says that if someone is married by a person that has the apparent authority, and there's a jurisdictional issue, you're still married," he said.
Bonds set by Blue wouldn't be an issue because all bonds subsequently are approved by a judge, Foresman said.
McBrien said the nunc pro tunc order was just "one option" and deferred to Covault's knowledge of the issue.
