Thursday, September 25, 2014

Busy courts and trouble reading

I keep hearing from judges that certain motions are "voluminous" meaning that it is difficult for judges to read them.

"Coincidentally", I am never hearing the same about motions filed against my clients, say, in a credit card consumer debt cases, or in foreclosure cases - in those cases courts usually rubber-stamp whatever the corporations want without complaining about "voluminous" motions.

Many times when I receive a judicial decision, not necessarily against my client, I see that judges fail to have read important portions of the record, because they either skip portions that by law they are not allowed to skip, or misrepresent it, showing that they did not read the record attentively, or even at all.

I understand how busy a judge can be and how many cases he may have.

I understand about budget cuts requiring judges to shoulder larger case burdens.

But - nobody dragged judges to benches against their will.

This is a job that has to be done, each case in front of a judge deals with a unique controversy where a litigant exhausted remedies out of court and has to resort to a court of law for assistance.

A judge has no right to claim that he or she is too busy to actually sit down and actually look and analyze the record of a case in front of him, no matter how voluminous the record is, in order to render a decision which may affect the entire life of an individual who came to court with a request for judicial intervention.

If the judge does not have enough time to do his job, he should either adjourn cases on his calendar so that he has enough time.  After all, for people who appear in front of him, each case may be life-changing, that's why they come and ask for the court's help and intervention to begin with.
And life-changing decisions should not be made by rushed or lazy people who have no desire to read what was put in front of them.

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