Monday, April 15, was Tax Day. This week, the NFL Draft, formerly known as the Lions’ Super Bowl, comes to town. Both events, directly or indirectly, conjured memories of my time litigating in Wayne County Circuit Court. I understand the picture above is of Grand Prix Day and not Draft Day. They’re closing the Court on Draft Day.
These events happened back in the days of in person court proceedings, and before the internet, meaning no court websites, and no email.
The first, involving Tax Day, was more an observation than an event in which I participated. Back in the days before TurboTax, eFiling (tax returns or legal pleadings), everyone mailed a paper return with paper supporting documents. These had to be postmarked by April 15 to avoid penalties. The local news station always had a story on the 11pm news, with a reporter outside the main post office, as people drove up to get a last minute April 15 postmark.
The morning of one April 15, I reported to the courtroom of Circuit Judge Sharon Tevis Finch, in City-County Building, as it was then called. Not sure of the year, though it was after the Circuit Court consolidated all the judges in that building. Previously, there were Circuit courtrooms in the now demolished Lafayette Building, and the now remodeled, but vacant, Old County Building. All those checking in were waited on by the Wayne County Sheriff assigned to Judge Finch’s court. The judge had a clerk, but it was not unusual at all for the Sheriff to help out. Well, while this sheriff helped out, he was also attempting to do his taxes. His many forms and schedules were spread out over all the quite limited desk space allotted to court personnel. I liked the sheriff, and he handled his multiple stress filled tasks with good humor. I hope no pleadings got mixed up with his returns.
I was somewhat surprised that Judge Finch allowed him to do his returns in open court, essentially on the County’s dime. My memory is that she ran a rather tight judicial ship. Once, during trial, she told me to stop walking from the podium to the vicinity of the witness box, as “my shoes were making too much noise on the courtroom floor”.
That’s all on that. I did entitle this piece, “Tidbits”.
The second memory was brought to mind by reading that the Wayne County Circuit Court was going to cancel in person proceedings during the NFL Draft, scheduled for April 25-27. Back in the old days, the NFL Draft was not such an extravaganza. There were between 17 and 30 rounds and the proceedings were conducted by conference call. Now this is an event awarded to a city, years in advance, much like a Super Bowl. I don’t mean to equate the two, but I don’t think Detroit was so consumed by a single event since Super Bowl XL was held here in 2006.
Crowds, special events, street and business closures will be everywhere. I don’t plan to be downtown for any of them.
But, I was downtown, way back in the 80s for the free practice day before one of the Detroit Grand Prix. This was the Friday before the weekend race. Downtown was packed. The track passed back of the City County Building, on Larned. There was a temporary pedestrian walkway over the street for use during the events. I know this because, I was scheduled for a divorce trial on that Friday afternoon. I withhold the name of the judge involved. I worked for a PI firm at the time, but because of my early general practice background, the firm was delighted to assign me any non-PI civil, divorce, criminal and real estate cases for various clients or friends of the firm.
As trial day approached, we called the Court, and was told that the trial would go as scheduled.
That day, the closest parking space I could find was a 45-minute walk from the courthouse. I did finally arrive, late I assume, to find my client, a very nice guy, sitting in the hallway outside the locked courtroom. There was a piece of looseleaf paper taped on the door, with “Cases for the afternoon of Friday, June (don’t remember) are cancelled”, in ball point ink. The end. No call to the litigants. No nothing. I spent the 45 minutes walking back to my parking spot using all of the profanity I had learned in 4 years at an all-boys’ Catholic high school. Some good stuff, too.
As often happens, writing down one incident reminds me of another. I now remember having a deposition downtown the afternoon of the 2004 Pistons NBA Championship parade and rally. The dep was at the Garan Lucow office, which was on Woodbridge just east of the RenCen. Such events are, obviously, set up with not much advance notice. But, once scheduled, the parties did try to cancel/adjourn/relocate the deposition. But my people, for some reason I can’t recall, were driving up from Florida for the depositions, and had already left at the time we tried to reschedule. We could not get in touch with them. My only option was to show up at the defense attorney’s office five hours early, before the streets closed. I got a spot in the smallest parking lot for a large law firm that I have ever seen. The clients did arrive, but at this time I don’t remember how they did it. It seemed like there would be so many options to hold the dep away from downtown. None worked out. The dep was over as a good part of the crowd had left the area.
The current state of technology and remote proceedings would have avoided much of what appears in this piece. But, what fun would that be? A lot more than I had on those particular occasions.
I hope the Lions get to appear at a Super Bowl, as a contestant, real soon.
