Comply with the Law

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Comply with the Law

As an outgrowth of an adverserial divorce, I had a surprising amount of litigation with my experience that Washington State judiciary is not governed by rules of law but by lawlessness and bullying tactics. One of the shocking things is that in this case there is no particularly reason for the Superior Court to simply ignore the constitution and statuts. They could trivially adjust their current process for handling domestic violence and they would be in compliance with the letter of law while they are already in compliance with the spirit of the law. In New York, where they have made compliance with the letter of the law a fine art, I imagine that even a Small Claims Court judge (at least one in particular, if not all) could in his sleep revise their process to comply with the letter of the law. There seems to be a sad side effect of lawlessness and bullying tactics that causes a blindness to lawful solutions to problems.

From my perspective, there were three chief problems with the manner in which domestic violence cases were handled in Clark County. The first and most important was the lack of jurisdiction of the Judges / Commissioners who made decisions in these matters. However, the only gap in jurisdiction for the District Court Judges was the hearings in cases of shared residence and Orders of duration greater than 14 days. However, by issuing a set of rules (perhaps two or three pages when fleshed out) about transferring cases to the District Court for processing (with appropirate stamps to document the process) much of the work could legitimately be done by the District Court. For those cases where it needs to be done in the Superior Court, they simply have to insure that there is a constitutional Superior Court Commisioner to handle the cases. That is mostly describing a procedure for insuring that only one Commissioner will hear such matters on any given day (keeping to the numeric limit of three as stated in the state constitution).

Given the compliexity of the rules, it would be helpful to specify how appeals should be processed. This would be an opportunity to provide simple appeals. Given the nature of domestic violence cases, quick decisions are essential, but such fast processing increases the possibility of errors. However, a simple process for getting a review of the decision could help prevent any serious miscarriages of justice.

The second problem was the lack of testimony in the hearings. However, the court seems to have resolved that my having both parties take the oath at the start of the hearing. It only adds a few seconds to each hearing, but conforms to the requirements of due process.

The third problem which is less apparent is the lack of ex parte hearings. The judges / commissioners just review the petitions in chambers and a clerk hands out the results. However, in order to issue a temporary order, they are required to hold an ex parte hearing either in person or via telephone. They just skip that step which is silly. In New York one can argue that the majority of decisions are made and written by the judge's clerk, but as they are always signed by the judge, it really can't be proven. It does mean that the judges and clerks work together closely and that the judge gets most of the face time which allows the clerk time to review the papers (most deicsions are made on the papers which are submitted) and write up decisions. I presume that the clerk and judge discuss any controversial cases so that the result reflects the desire of the judge. However, why couldn't a clerk review the petitions, discussing any interesting cases with the judge, and the judge sign and hand out the result. That would meet the requirements of the statutes as well as being a vehicle of sound justice.

One other point that I noticed in hearings is that the court often reissues temporary orders for longer than fourteen days when service was not obtained. However, the statutes do not seem to support these longer orders. While it is unlikely that an appeal would ever be made of such a long order, there is little reason to just ignore the statute in that regard.

While I am dreaming, it would also be nice if they added a section for all Orders with no attorneys representing the parties (which is most of them) that service by mail is acceptable. That would certianly simplify and speed the process when errors are made.

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This page was last updated on March 15, 2007