“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.”’
CALL THEM Judge.
At the very least get that right.
If you come to court unrepresented by a lawyer, the judge will speak to you.
They may ask you a question. The answer to that question is not “yeah”, “ok”, “dunno” etc.
Its “yes Judge” or “ok Judge”.
“Thanks” is also helpful.
"When you’re looking out for warning signs,
you tend to spot these things.
A vague image of a zebra drinking
at the edge of a crocodile-filled river flickered before my eyes."
But “Judge” is both simple and effective.
It’s a sign of respect.
Muttering “yeah”, “grand” or some other variation of that, is not.
So far, so commonsense.
If you ever listen to police officers or lawyers in court, they practically trip over themselves repeating the word ‘judge’.
Every second or third word out of their mouth contains that term.
Now why is that?
Don’t get clever. I have seen this happen too.
There is only one clever person in court and its not you.
After all, if you were that bright, you wouldn’t be there in the first place.
On occasion somebody -almost always a man- will come into court and decide to refer to the judge as “justice”.
Women don’t do this. In fact, I’ve never heard a woman refer to a judge as “justice”.
But I have heard some men say it, usually with an air of “I know something you don’t know”.
That’s fine, depending on the judge.
________________
THERE WAS A JUDGE I knew who had a very short temper.
‘Volcanic’ described him perfectly. At any moment he could explode. The slightest thing set him off.
He didn’t ‘play favourites’ in court.
Some judges have their favourite lawyer or lawyers, often people they’ve known for years. They might look approvingly on them, smile at them, exchange pleasant jokes with them, that sort of thing.
This judge didn’t do any of that. He had no favourites.
Everybody was equally worthless in his eyes.
At some stage we all got it in the neck, police officers and lawyers, clients. You always knew he was about to ‘blow his stack’ when his head dropped, and he began staring intently at the bench in front of him.
When you saw him quietly put his pen down and start looking out the window, you had about 2-3 seconds to get out of the ‘blast zone’ before he went off.
On other occasions there’d be no warning signs, no time to move to safer ground.
It just depended on how things developed in court.
But every day, at some stage, some poor fool would say something that all of us knew would light his fuse.
"If you’ve never been in front of a blast furnace
it has a sort of cleansing effect.
Everything in front of it is eviscerated.
Once the blast wave has receded all that remains is a sort of wasteland"
In his book Insanely Simple, Ken Segal the advertising and creative director at Apple described what it was like working with Steve Jobs. Jobs was brilliant and famously blunt.
He had no patience for fools or “bullshitters” and when someone in a meeting said something that he regarded as idiotic, it set him off.
When that happened Segal described Jobs’ head turning, like a ‘rotating turret’.
“The offending comment would reverberate in the air, and it would seem as if the entire world went into slow motion as Steve’s internal sensors fixed on the origins of the sound wave.
You could almost hear the meshing of gears as Steve’s ‘turret’ slowly turned towards the guilty party. Everyone knew what was coming- but was powerless to stop it…
_________________________
ONE DAY A MAN appeared in court who decided to represent himself. The case was minor, a speeding offence. The judge asked him whether he was legally represented.
The man smiled. He had no need of lawyers.
He had a stack of papers in his hands. He would represent himself.
He had the smug look of a man who had repeated to himself how his big day in court would go.
Both the court and the judge would be awed by the insight of a man with no legal training, a man who had spotted something that none of the lawyers did.
He would depart the court like a conquering general.
“No Justice” he said.
We looked up immediately. Those of us who had evolved to spot the slightest sign of danger, detected the curling of the lower lip. When you’re looking out for warning signs, you tend to spot these things.
A vague image of a zebra drinking at the edge of a crocodile-filled river flickered before my eyes.
“Judge” came the reply. The voice was quiet and you almost had to strain to hear it.
The judge began to speak but not hearing him the man began to tell his sorry tale.
The voice interrupted.
“I am speaking, do you mind?”
“I’m sorry Justice”.
This was, to use a baseball metaphor, “strike two”.
All of us began to brace ourselves.
"And by the way, don’t refer to them as “Your Honour”.
Judges are not known as that in this country
or anywhere else, except the United States.
So why do people say it?
Probably because they’ve spent decades watching
TV court dramas where lawyers refer to the judge as
‘Your Honour’ and assumed they should too".
“Judge” the voice corrected him again.
The man strained his ear and leaned forward. “I’m sorry”?
“Judge” repeated the voice, irritably.
There is a scene in Ian Fleming’s “Goldfinger” where the secret agent runs into his nemesis for a third time.
On the first two occasions Goldfinger dismisses the meetings as mere chance or annoyance. But not on the third occasion. He says:
‘Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.”’
What are the odds that an article about court etiquette would have a reference to the movie business?
Hollywood’s influence on all our lives is extensive.
________________
In the movie Bond was being told that he had burned through his second warning.
There would not be another.
And just like our court scene, two warnings had been issued.
The third occasion would be “enemy action”. But unlike Mr Bond who escapes, there would be no escape here.
“You are charged with driving while exceeding the speed limit”.
“Yes justice”.
A pause.
“How do you plead to the charge?”
“Not guilty Justice came the confident response”.
And then it happened
“Judge’! he thundered. ‘I am a Judge! Not a Justice! Do you understand? Justices of the Peace were abolished when this country got its independence! Do you understand”?
If you’ve never been in front of a blast furnace it has a sort of cleansing effect. Everything in front of it is eviscerated.
Once the blast wave has receded all that remains is a sort of wasteland.
There's no idle chatter, no movement of people, no birds singing outside, nothing.
Everything is frozen in time, sort of like Pompei when the volcano erupted.
So, it was here. All was quiet.
The poor man was dry roasted, muttering incomprehensible gibberish while picking up the papers he had dropped.
“I’ll deal with your case, last”!
Not only had the poor man addressed the judge incorrectly, he had also insulted him.
Things had not gone according to plan.
As Emperor Hirohito said after the second atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945, “the situation has developed not necessarily to [our] advantage”.
_______________________
THEN AGAIN THAT Judge was, how to put this, part of the ‘old school’. He had a sort of contempt for the niceties of life.
The vast majority of judges today won’t speak to you like that. They wouldn’t dream of it.
But there is one thing that they all quite like: respect.
This makes perfect sense to you.
You know this already, but you’d be surprised at just how many people come into court and fail to demonstrate this.
Whether it’s the way they speak to the judge, whether it’s their behaviour (you’d be surprised by how some people come to court for ‘a chat’) or how they present themselves (a significant number of people come to court in tracksuits or jeans) some people can’t help shooting themselves in the foot.
You do not want to build up opportunities to make a judge mad at you.
After all, nobody wants to face what Mr Goldfinger helpfully described as “enemy action.”
_____________
And by the way, don’t refer to them as “Your Honour”.
Every day in courts across the country defendants refer to the judge as Your Honour.
Judges are not known as that in this country or anywhere else, except the United States.
So why do people say it?
Probably because they’ve spent decades watching TV court dramas where lawyers refer to the judge as ‘Your Honour’ and assumed they should too.
As I was saying, Hollywood’s reach into all our lives is extensive.
For your own sake, mind your Ps and Qs.
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