April 2005 “Tips from the Bench”

By Judge John Wittmayer, Multnomah County Circuit Court.

When your case settles after assignment to a judge

If your case settles after call and before the trial, your second phone call (after you call your client) should be to the trial judge. Presiding court usually has cases “standing by” for assignment when cases settle. Therefore, the earlier you tell the trial judge your case has settled, the earlier a stand-by case can get assigned out for trial.

When your civil motion does not need to be decided, because you resolved either the motion or the whole case, please call the assigned judge directly. Do not assume that if you call civil calendaring the staff there will be able to notify the assigned judge. I can not tell you how many times I learned the motion was cancelled only after my assistant called the lawyers to ask why no one was here.

If the trial settles, we need to hear from the plaintiff’s lawyer. If the motion resolves, we need to hear from the lawyer who filed the motion, not the lawyer against whose client the motion was filed.

UTCR 7.040 requires that parties immediately report to the court any resolution of any matter scheduled on the court’s docket. Good manners requires the same thing.

Jury panels in Multnomah County

For trials scheduled to begin on Mondays through Thursdays, the court generally has approximately 175 potential jurors available for jury selection. Because we do not currently start jury trials on Fridays, we do not bring “new” jurors to the courthouse on Fridays.

The jury summons advises the person that “[y]our term of service includes the date below [one specific day is listed in the summons], and it continues until the completion of any trial(s) for which you are selected. Some trials are short, so you may serve on more than one jury trial. Other trials are longer, so your service may continue beyond one day.”

While you and I may read this jury summons and understand that the juror may be expected to be here for your long trial, many, many jurors come to jury duty expecting or hoping that they will only be here for the one day for which they have been summoned. The judges have different views on excusing potential jurors during jury selection if a juror asserts it would be a hardship to be here as long as your long trial will take. In my experience, it is possible, although difficult, to get a jury for a 10 or 12 day trial out of our regular jury panel.

If you have a trial that is expected to take three weeks or longer, you should approach the presiding judge a couple of months in advance of your trial date. Request that the presiding judge pre-assign the case to a trial judge so that the trial judge can order a special jury panel for your long trial. Unlike regular jury panels, special jury panels are generally summoned for Fridays only. It generally takes four or five weeks advance notice to get a special jury panel ordered. When a special jury panel is summoned, the jurors are notified on the summons how long your trial is expected to last.