legal sanity

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Here is a great piece about the dressing down some not-so-civil litigants received in an order from U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin, Texas. The judge issued the pointed order in an attempt to stop the madness propagated by “lawyers he felt were trying harder to attack each other than litigate their 20-month-old case.” Thinking it high time that the litigants stop wasting time, get a life and consider attending anger management classes, the judge wrote: "Frankly, the undersigned would guess the lawyers in this case did not attend kindergarten, as they never learned how to get along well with others.” After receiving the order, plaintiff’s lead counsel copped “the case has spawned an unusual number of motions—including three motions for protective orders by the plaintiffs—all of which have required hearings before the judge.” He also conceded the parties “used up a lot of the court’s valuable time on disputes that [ ] were avoidable." From my experience, I believe the kind of abuse the court tried to check here is not uncommon. I think we’d see far less of it if more jurists and lawyers followed Judge Sparks’ lead and countered such abuse with a zero tolerance policy.