A week in the court life.

2006-07-29
1:06 p.m.

After a week in court all day every day this week, I planned to wake up today feeling invigorated and armed to clean up this house and do laundry and start an appeal and save the world.

What I have actually done is lay around reading all morning, finally taking a shower at 12:30. At ten after 1 now, I still haven't even dried my hair.

Hubby has made plans for us to eat out tonight with a couple he bowls with at Cinzel's aunt and uncle's restaurant. This couple is from Chalmette, and they are transplants here courtesy of Katrina. Hubby really likes them, and I'm sure I will too, as they sound perfectly delightful as he describes them.

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This week saw some interesting stories in court. We tried a civil case that managed to stretch into what eventually felt like a death march to abolutely nothing worthwhile. The case is EIGHT years old, and the event which gave rise to it happened nearly TEN years ago.

It basically all boiled down to the plaintiff wanting a pound of flesh from the defendant. Instead the jury gave him $500 more than his original justice court legal costs. He has spent considerably more than that award on the legal fees for his civil case. Even on a contingency basis, the discovery costs have to be huge.

Neither party was particularly buzzed about the verdict, and I thought that was quite appropriate. Can we all grow up now and get back to our respective lives??? The funny part is both plaintiff and defendant seemed very likable when I spoke with them one-on-one.

The second interesting case is also a terribly sad one. A couple of weeks ago on motion day we had a bond hearing on a defendant that is mentally ill. When she doesn't take her medicine, she does crazy things, one of which was simple assault on a law enforcement officer, which is what got her in jail to start with.

When she does take her medicine, though, she is quite pleasant and you would never know (in the short time we see her) that she has the problems she does unmedicated.

Anyway, the judge let her out on bond two weeks ago to go back and live with her mother, and she was not to call her mother-in-law or ex-husband (who live together). Well, they have custody of her eight-year-old daughter, whom she desperately wants to see or at least speak to, and she did call them, asking to see the child, against the judge's order. She hasn't been allowed to see or speak with the child for seven months while she's been sitting in jail.

The mother-in-law has been raising all kinds of hell with our clerk since the defendant was released, and yesterday the defendant was sent back to jail until her mental evaluation can be done at the state hospital.

Very, very sad case. The defendant is mentally ill, but the mother-in-law, in my humble opinion, is purely vindictive and evil. No, I don't know all the background on these two, but I wish the mother-in-law would be put in jail, too, for violating the custody order. Even if it was just for a few days, I'd like to see her get a taste of what she's putting her ex-daughter-in-law through.

The judge became very angry and irate with the defendant, but I really, really wish he would have unleashed a little of his anger at the mother-in-law, who sat in the front row with a told-you-so smile plastered on her face. I very much wanted to step out in the audience and ask her a very sarcastic "satisfied now?" when the sobbing defendant was taken away.

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Guess I should go try to do something with my hair and get something constructive done with these next few hours.

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