William P. Robinson III

In Rhode Island, the Supreme Court in the only state court of appeal. If challenged, decisions from the Superior Court to the Family Court end up at the Rhode Island Supreme Court. The justices hear more than 100 cases a year.[11]

In 2018, Justice Robinson dissented from the majority in a widely-reported common law marriage case. The Providence Journal wrote six stories about the case from 2016 to 2018. The Superior court had ruled that Angela Luis and Kevin Gaugler, who had lived together for more than 20 years, were married in common law. The Supreme Court overturned the decision. [12]

Justice Robinson wrote: “It is my definite view that the trial justice’s finding fact and her determinations about credibility do very clearly and much more than sufficiently constitute a basis for her ultimate holding that there was clear and convincing evidence of a common law marriage…” “She [the trial justice] examined the record as a whole,” Robinson wrote.[13]

He dissented in 2017 in a pension case involving former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci's top administrator who had been convicted on six felonies in the Plunder Dome scandal. The majority had overturned a decision of the city's pension board to reduce the administrator's pension. [14] “In my judgment,” Justice Robinson wrote, “this Court should be extremely wary about closing to any extent the door which has been traditionally wide open— viz., the door to Equity.”

After 20 years in the courts, the Supreme Court granted Cianci's former director of administration a partial pension of $1,842.61 a month. [15]

In 2007, in a freedom on the press case, Robinson wrote the majority opinion in a libel suit filed against the New Bedford Standard Times by a man who allegedly left the scene of a fatal accident. The newspaper had relied on a police report for its story and cited its fair-report privilege in its motion for summary judgment.

While in private practice, Robinson represented the St. George's School in 1989 against allegations of condoning a culture of rape. In the case, Anne Scott described having been serially raped at age 15 by a 67-year-old school trainer, Al Gibbs. While not known publicly at that time, four other students had complained to the school about being raped by that same trainer. The school attacked the allegations, by—for example—insisting that the former student be forced to publicly reveal her identity. Robinson directed this legal defense. As he wrote as part of the 1989 legal case, "Maybe people will come forward and say the plaintiff is a, with all due respect to those in the court, has a tendency to lie, and that would be relevant, also." As part of his defense of the school, Robinson also argued that if the two did have sex, that it was consensual .[16] While making that case, Robinson was chastised by U.S. Magistrate Jacob Hagopian, who denied the school's motion to dismiss, saying that the teenager could not consent to such "detestable" acts. "It violates the criminal laws of the United States," he said, "or of any state of this Union, or of any civilized country, where the element of it being volitional or non-volitional, or voluntary or non-voluntary, has anything to do with this type of detestable allegation made by a person who is not of age of consent, can you explain that to me?" When Robinson tried to explain, Hagopian cut him off, stating, "It’s impossible. It violates the criminal laws of the United States." [17]

While that 1989 case has long been dropped, an investigation by St. George's own attorneys in 2015 concluded that the allegations of rape were true. Further, a total of at least 26 students were assaulted by at least 6 members of the St. George's faculty and staff[18][19]

In 2016, in reaction to criticism, Robinson defended himself: "In the 1980s, while engaged in the private practice of law, I represented St. George’s School in certain litigation in the federal court which has recently become the subject of interest in the media. I represented the client as an attorney must, zealously, ethically and to the best of my ability. I do not believe that further comment is necessary or appropriate.[20]