by David Ball
Staff Writer
“If you want to know what sentence your client is going to get next week, I don’t think they’re going to tell you,” said attorney Alan Rosner, who organized Thursday’s Sidebar Box Lunch for the Jacksonville Bar Association.
However, the five criminal law judges fielded other questions from the 40 or so local attorneys gathered at courtroom A in the County Courthouse. Topics ranges from judges’ pet peeves to how an attorney can ruin his or her reputation with one careless act, and the attorneys also shared some of their opinions about judges’ conduct.
Circuit judges Marc Mahon, Michael Weatherby, Hugh Carithers and Charles Arnold and County Court Judge Mallory Cooper represented the bench, and a wide selection of young and experienced lawyers chimed in. The back-and-forth discussion was exactly what the session was for, said Rosner of Harris Guidi, who chairs the JBA’s Judicial Relations Committee.
“This is our second one. I think we need to do more of these,” said Rosner, whose first session was moderated by attorney Elliot Zisser and featured judges and magistrates of the Family Law Division. The next session is scheduled for June with federal judges.
“It’s almost like having a seminar,” added Rosner. “But instead of lawyers talking to lawyers, you’ve got the judges who are there making the rulings and seeing the procedural deficiencies and giving instruction.”
Deficiencies was the first topic, as moderator Hugh Cotney asked the judges what a lawyer should not do in their courtroom to ruin a reputation or career.
“Just don’t tell a judge something that isn’t true,” said Arnold. “I can count on one hand in the last decade the number of times a lawyer misrepresented something to me...and I can remember every one of them.”
But that response led to an in-depth discussion over what an attorney is ethically obligated to divulge about a client to the court. Attorney A. Russell Smith said the Florida Supreme Court is currently considering an ethics opinion that would make it a violation for an attorney to proceed with a case knowing his or her client has given a false name or identification to the court.
The debate went around the room with both prosecutors, defenders and judges giving their opinions, most agreeing that the attorney shouldn’t be placed in a position to violate the attorney-client privilege.
The discussion then went back to judges’ top lawyer pet peeves, on which the Jacksonville Bar recently completed a survey. Weatherby’s pet peeve was fairly straight forward.
“I have a problem with attorneys who regularly don’t roll into the courtroom until 10:30 or 11 o’clock in the morning, when I’m there in the building at 7:30 or 8 o’clock. The least you can do is check in with the prosecutor,” said Weatherby, who added there wasn’t anyone in the room who had shown him the discourtesy.
However, attorney Bill White said that pet peeve is a two-way street with judges who are late to court.
“An attorney’s time is valuable, and you should be considerate of that time,” he said. “I know our attorneys are very frustrated sometimes with the hours of downtime there is sometimes.”
Jacksonville Bar President Caroline Emery said there aren’t very many venues like the Sidebar Lunches where attorneys and judges can talk casually, but also in-depth about courtroom issues.
“I think what’s attractive is it’s an informal venue for them to exchange information,” she said. “What excited me was the attorneys and judges were both so actively participating in discussion. Everybody was very forthright and very candid. It think we’re definitely on to something.”
photos by David Ball