NEW COUNTY COURT JUDGE AND TRISCADECAPHOBIA

DOUBLE BREAKING BLOG NEWS: Guilty of first degree murder verdicts in the Merrick Park murder case tried these past few weeks before Judge Reemberto Diaz. Grim faced defense attorneys vowed to appeal.

A reader posted this BREAKING BLOG NEWS:


Move over, Capitan:Breaking Blog News....Rodney Smith has just been appointed as a County Court judge. Good luck to everyone.


TRISCADECAPHOBIA

We were poking around the new Federal Courthouse the other day, seeing just how far we could get until the Marshals asked us to leave, and we actually got to the top floor, which just happens to be the thirteenth floor. Further investigation revealed that Chief Judge Federico Moreno, complete with the circa 1987 Justice Building wooden sign that he was first given to put outside his courtroom when appointed as a county court judge, was there with the old sign hanging outside his new courtroom.

The rumor was Judge Paul "Take all the time you need to get ready" Huck was going to start his calendars in the new building on the thirteenth floor today.

Query: Just how many clients are going to be happy having trials on the thirteenth floor of the courthouse?

Of course the real luck , as longtime and careful readers of this blog know, is in hiring the right lawyer, as opposed to the lawyer the client's bondsman tells him/her to hire (if you look in the mirror and the previous sentence applies to you counselor: for shame for shame).

In any event, it seemed a bit warm in the building, and the elevators were not nearly as nice as the refurbished ones we have in our humble Justice Building.
How many years late is this courthouse in opening? And they still have A/C and mold problems? And they tempted fate by making it thirteen floors? As Judge Moreno once told one of our clients: "Be careful what you ask for in life, because you may get it."

See You In Court, NOT on the 13th floor (not that it really matters to us. A "not guilty" is a "not guilty" wherever it comes.)

THE UPS AND DOWNS

of practising law in federal court have never been more apparent than in the last couple of weeks. Literally.

Have a case in federal court?
Here are your choices: The Dyer Building and all the mold you can breathe or...
the King Courthouse which has eleven floors, and ONE working elevator at any given moment. Don't even bother saying a word when you race into court 20 minutes late for a hearing. The Judge already knows. You were in the building a half hour ago, and that's how long you waited to get into an elevator.



Meanwhile, the Wilkie Ferguson courthouse sits there like a gleaming glass joke, laughing and mocking the lawyers trudging around it on the way to the Mold or the Stairs. A marshal recently whispered to us that on some days NO elevators were working in the new courthouse. And MOLD is not a word confined to the Dyer building.

(laughing at us?)



Yup, as surprising as it may seem to our federal architect experts, in South Florida, the combination of heat and humidity creates....all together now...
No- not weapons of mass destruction, but nice try Mr. Vice President.
It's Mold. And the Feds have plenty of it.





So there you have it. A nice juicy federal case walks into your office, and after the cheque clears (nobody takes cash do they?) you have a year ( or two weeks if you get Judge Huck) of running up and down the stairs of the King building; holding your breath in the Dyer building; all the while staring wistfully at the new Wilkie Ferguson courthouse, which combines the best (or worst) of the other courthouses.



See You In The REGJB, where the elevators work. And so do the escalators. And even when they don't, it's only six stair flights of courtrooms and most of us can use the exercise