A New Orleans judge faces an ethics case over a loan from Sidney Torres. Her dad also got one.

As Judge Jennifer Medley is set to face questions in a September ethics hearing over a $100,000 loan she got from garbage magnate Sidney Torres IV, records show that Torres gave another loan to Medley’s father around the same time.

Two days after Medley won a seat on the Civil District Court bench in Orleans Parish in 2020, in a campaign against former Judge Christopher Bruno that was heavily backed by Torres, Torres’s IV Capital LLC gave a $75,000 loan to retired Judge Lloyd J. Medley Jr., Medley’s father and the chairman of her campaign committee.

At the time, Jennifer Medley had more than $72,000 in campaign debts, campaign finance reports show. More than half of that — about $42,700 — was owed to a separate Torres company that produced campaign ads for her.

Campaign reports show she eventually repaid her debt to Torres.

No one involved has been willing to explain the purpose of the loan given to the elder Medley or if it has been repaid. Asked about it in a phone interview, Lloyd Medley said, “I will have no comment.” Torres also declined to answer specific questions.

“We’re in the business of lending money,” Torres said in a brief statement, which noted that his company was formed nearly a decade prior to the loan. “IV Capital does not discuss any specific details about any account without written authority from the customer.”

Jennifer Medley didn’t return messages left at her office and by email. Neither did her attorney.

It’s unclear if the Louisiana Judiciary Commission, which has lodged misconduct charges against Jennifer Medley over her 2020 campaign, is aware of the second loan to the judge’s father. It is not part of the judicial misconduct case pending against her before the commission.

Lloyd Medley’s home in Gentilly was used as collateral, according to Orleans Parish land records. 

Land records also show Torres’s company filed a request to cancel his loan to Jennifer Medley in December 2021, which stated the loan had been repaid. There’s no indication in land records that Lloyd Medley’s loan has been canceled.

A spokesperson for the Judiciary Commission, which operates in secret, said the agency can’t comment on pending matters.

Clare Roubion, a lawyer who has represented judges before the commission, said the state’s judicial canons do not apply to Lloyd Medley because he is no longer a judge. He was defeated in a 2014 re-election attempt after serving 18 years on the bench.

But the loan to her father could fall into an ethical gray area for Jennifer Medley, because judges are forbidden from directly accepting contributions and must route all political activity through campaign committees, Roubion said.

So judicial ethical issues could arise if the money given to Lloyd Medley was used on Jennifer Medley's campaign, Roubion said.

Jennifer Medley is already accused of “willful misconduct” by the Judiciary Commission, which lodged formal charges in late May alleging she approved attack ads with bogus or unsubstantiated claims against Bruno.

She also appeared to try to circumvent campaign contribution limits by accepting a $100,000 loan from Torres’s company, money that ended up in her campaign account, the commission alleged.

In a response to the charges, Jennifer Medley said she repaid the $100,000 to Torres and said her inexperience as a political candidate partly contributed to her missteps.

Now halfway through a six-year term, Jennifer Medley emerged as a first-time candidate in 2020 with major backing from Torres, who had lost a legal fight in Bruno’s courtroom over control of a commercial property on Frenchmen Street.

In one ad in Medley’s campaign, a woman who said she was a rape victim said Bruno dismissed her credibility in court, claims an oversight panel later ruled were unfounded. A second ad referred to Bruno as a “deadbeat dad,” claiming he failed to pay child support.

Bruno obtained a restraining order that prevented the ad from running, and an appeals court later said Medley knew the ad was false, or that she “at the very least acted with reckless disregard for whether her statements in the commercial were false."

Also at issue was the $100,000 loan that Medley accepted from Torres in September 2020, which the commission alleges Medley falsely claimed was for property improvements.

The same day the loan was recorded, Medley loaned her campaign $85,000. She loaned her campaign another $15,000 the following week.

Medley also made news in 2023 when it emerged that she had approved a settlement that lowered the bar for recalling Mayor LaToya Cantrell without disclosing that she had signed the recall petition. She later asked the state Supreme Court to rule on whether she needed to be recused from the case.

Despite Medley's ruling, the recall failed by a wide margin.