Well Deserved Contempt

Spent the morning ordering thread, which is actually more exciting that it sounds. To me. Any normal person would be comatose. How did that take most of the morning? Hell if I know… I wanted to do it right and compare prices?

I was defense counsel for two show cause hearings this afternoon. Twins. Their Guardian ad litem had filed Rules to Show Cause (contempt of court charges) on each of them because they weren’t going to school.

I worked it out with the GAL to dismiss the charge against one of the twins and felt pretty good about that. As for the second child, the GAL and I went back and forth and she eventually agreed to not seek detention time if the Court found the child guilty (the court could order up to ten days in detention). The agreement was that if the child was found guilty and if the Court imposed detention time, the GAL would not object to holding any such time in abeyance. I didn't have to give anything in exchange for the agreement, probably because the GAL didn't have her heart set on the child being locked up in the first place. I thought that was about as good as it was going to get because they had my client cold – the child simply would not go to school. Even without the GAL pushing to serve time, chances were good that the Court would put my child in detention for a few days in order to get her attention.

When we got into the courtroom, the Judge reviewed the Order and there was some discussion about the basis for the contempt charges. Before I had a chance to speak, the Court announced that the underlying Order only ordered the MOTHER to get them to school but neglected to Order the children to attend (This was clearly an oversight because they almost always have school attendance as part of the Order but there you go). Everyone began combing through the files to see if that was correct, except me. I was on my feet saying my kids couldn't be found in contempt and the matter should be dismissed (like I knew that all along). The Judge scolded the kids for missing school but dismissed the contempt charges. It was the proper ruling.

So what that amounts to is the Judge originally messed up by not ordering the kids to attend school. The GAL messed up by not filing the contempt charge against the proper party (the mother). The twins messed up by not going to school. I messed up by not double checking the Order before walking into the courtroom. Sure, I jumped up and argued that my clients hadn’t disobeyed the Order once I spotted the problem but by the time I figured it out, the Judge already was all over it.

As I said in my previous post – monkeys with law degrees.