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Don't Be Too Judge Reliant

By Peter Olson

I'm making a little confession here about a stupid thing I did recently to save you a future hassle.
I over-relied on a particular judge's idiosyncrasies to the detriment of what I wanted done. Nothing major or particularly fatal longer-term but I had a less than perfectly productive court date. Because, "our" judge wasn't on the bench for our court date.

I have this case that's been going on for 5+ years and we're now at the post-appeals stage (If you want a primer on the Illinois Partition Act just ask...that's this case). Well, we've had this same trial judge for all that time and he knows the case well. And he has this thing that he literally does NOT look at pleadings. So over five years I've probably filed 50ish motions/petitions and he's likely never looked at one of them and he shuns even your attempt to hand documents to the bench when you're before him.

And wouldn't ya know it this week he wasn't there, and his replacement actually wanted a written motion in order to do what we wanted done. And this BAD, BAD lawyer didn't have one.

Full post as published by Solo In Chicago on May 22, 2008 (boomark / email).