Court is Back in Session

I bailiffed for the Moot Court again the other day. It was a whole different experience this week. First of all, no Judge Hottie. In fact, two of the three judges didn’t even bother to show up. A woman in her early 30s who was on the moot court team when she was a Pitt student herself was the only one of the three who came. When, at 6:15, it became apparent that the other judges wouldn’t be there, she got on her cell phone and called around to her colleagues and eventually talked one of them into dropping everything and running down to Our Law School to judge. At 6:30, we had to tell one of the teams that their trial was postponed until sometime next week. I felt horrible for them. They were all prepared to go, dressed up in their suits, dragged their exhibits into school.... and then they get told to just go home.

It turns out that there are actually people who don’t want to advance to the next round. I was shocked! I mean, to me, there’s no reason to do something like this if you don’t want to win. Not that doing something like this has no value if you don’t win. I sincerely believe that it’s all in the journey and in challenging yourself to be the best you can be. But it just seems strange to me that you wouldn’t want to find out that doing your best turns out to be the best, if that makes any sense. Apparently, though, there are people who are only in this for the one credit hour that you earn if you complete the first round. People who go on to the subsequent rounds are not given any additional credit—they are competing for the glory of it, if you will.

I ended up as the bailiff for Judge Blonde. She was... one tough broad. That’s the best description I can come up with for her. She has no time for nonsense and doesn’t want to hear your excuses. I explained the timing rules, gave the lovely “all rise” speech (and remembered to ask for her name beforehand, so that’s an improvement) and she jumped right into the proceedings. No “pre-trial motions” on her docket, no siree.

Opening arguments started and you could see right away that these guys were not in the league of the teams that I saw last week. Stammer, stutter, repeat yourself, lather rinse, repeat. It was awful to listen to. But the important thing is the questioning of the witnesses, so a terrible opening isn’t the end of the world.

Oh God, the questioning of the witnesses. Rule number one of questioning witnesses is Know Thy Rules of Evidence. Let me tell you just how very much the Plaintiff’s attorneys violated this rule. Now, don’t get me wrong. I know that in the heat of the moment it can be difficult to see clearly enough to know exactly which rule is being violated, even when you know there’s some problem with the question. But there is no excuse for not being able to defend your own line of questioning against the opposing counsel’s objections. One of the first things we did with our lines of questioning back in the day was to try to think of all the possible objections that could be made to each individual question and then come up with the reasons why the objections should be overruled. These attorneys not only didn’t do that, they must not have even read the rules of evidence before the competition ever. The Defense totally destroyed several of their key lines on direct. Then they failed to prevent the defense attorneys from bullying their witnesses all over the playground during cross-examination. It was sad, really. I kept wanting to leap up and yell “Asked and Answered! Asked and Answered!!”

I think my favorite part of the night was when, after the two sides had been bickering back and forth over whether the defendant could testify that he was driving at a “reasonable speed” for five minutes straight, Judge Blonde finally yelled in exasperation, “Will somebody please ask the defendant whether he looked at the speedometer or not?” Beautiful.

The timing rules for these trials are pretty simple. You get a certain amount of time for each witness (it varies for each witness). For example, for direct examination of the plaintiff, the attorneys had 20 minutes. Then the defense gets 10 minutes to cross-examine the witness. Following the cross, the plaintiff’s attorney then has the opportunity for re-direct of the witness, but only if there is time remaining from the direct examination. In other words, direct + re-direct cannot equal more than 20 minutes. This becomes a matter of strategy—how much of your time do you want to reserve for re-direct when you may not even need it?

The attorneys don’t even have to time themselves. That’s one of my jobs as a bailiff. I sit behind the judge and to the side so that both sides can see me. I record the time that the examination begins and when it gets close to the end of the allotted time, I hold up a 4x6 notecard that has the remaining time written on it. There’s a warning at 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds, and 10 seconds. Then the bailiff is to stop the questioning, regardless of where it stands.
I hold these cards up above my head and generally try to keep them up until the attorney sees it, or until the next card goes up—whichever comes first. The previous teams that I bailiffed for were very good at 1) positioning themselves so that they could see me out of the corner of their eye OR 2) having their partner watch for the warnings and give them a signal. These guys were just not paying attention. It didn’t really matter for the most part, because they were not coming anywhere near the allotted time limits. But the Plaintiff came back for re-direct of a witness with only one minute remaining. He saw the one minute warning for sure because he was looking directly at me when I raised it. And his partner saw the 30 second and 10 second warnings, but didn’t say or do anything. Finally, I called “Time”. He glanced up at me and kept going like I hadn’t said anything. I repeated “Your time is up” in a much louder and firmer voice. His jaw snapped shut so fast I swear I heard his teeth crunch. Then he tried to argue with me that his time couldn’t possibly be up. Judge Blonde nipped that right in the bud. He “apologized”—and that’s in quotes because what he said was “I’m sorry. I know you’re just doing your job.” Which is not an apology in my book. But whatever—it’s not personal, I would do the same if LaPresidente or War Or Death were the attorney involved.

Now I’m really interested to see who gets to the next round.