Ignoring Judge's directions re documents?

[EskimoArapaho]

A friend is (still) going through a messy divorce. Access to children stopped by ex-wife, etc. Latest step is her application to emigrate with the children. There's a 2-day hearing next week. As part of this, with >1500 pages of prior submissions, the Judge ordered both sides to summarise their positions in a 4-page document.

My friend did this, exactly as per the spec required (1.5 lines spacing, 12pt type, etc). She hasn't; her submission is very tightly spaced and perhaps 8 or 9pt type. Looks to be about twice the number of words from a rough calculation. So obviously her summary contains way more info than his document.

What, if anything, could/should he do? Ask for it to be ruled inadmissible on the day? Rely on the Judge to discount half of it? Hope it helps to persuade the judge that she does not follow the Court's instructions and that this actually works in his favour?

(FWIW, he will be unrepresented, as he is now 100% skint, living in a lock-up unit, etc).

[theguvernor15]

IANAL, however i have had first hand dealing with the family courts fighting my ex there!
One thing i learned, is that the family courts have the best interests of the child at heart, judges are only interested in fact/evidence not tit for tat.
They can sit there & waffle & slate you as much as you want, but judges are used to hearing that sort of thing day in day out.

If i was your friend i would just be going through with a highlighter & highlighting the important parts, when my ex's solictor would send waffling long letters or give long debates in the court room my solicitor would just note down the important parts. The devil is in the detail.

I guess he could briefly raise the point that the font size is hard to read & contains a lot more wording than necessary to summarize, but it's not something i wouldn't think that would make her lose the case.

FWIW, if i was going through the family courts again i would self-rep, i spent close to £10K fighting the ex & i really felt a bit hard done by for the money i paid!
Of probably 10+ hearings i reckon i could of done 9 of them on my own, it is daunting though i will agree.

[RobinOakapple]

I expect the judge will simply skim read both of them. It shouldn't take even 4 pages to summarise a position, no doubt both summaries contain a great deal of extraneous material.

[JustinP1]

EskimoArapaho said:

What, if anything, could/should he do? Ask for it to be ruled inadmissible on the day? Rely on the Judge to discount half of it? Hope it helps to persuade the judge that she does not follow the Court's instructions and that this actually works in his favour?

Those, IIRC are pretty standard directions.

It's that way to make the text easy to read for the reader - in this case the judge.

If you make text difficult to read - tightly spaced, small font, no page margins and long paragraphs it it very difficult on the eye to read and tedious.

Someone who does this in any kind of document does themselves no favours for doing this, and in fact makes their document less likely to be read and understood at all. The judge will decide if he wants to read it or not. Might he throw it out? Probably not, but the author has actively annoyed the judge before he's started.

I'd let it be.

[assadahmed]

As a solicitor dealing in family work, I would also say to just leave it and it will be up to the judge. If in a bad mood, the judge can refuse to read it. If in a better mood it will be read!

[LoonR1]

EskimoArapaho said:

A friend is (still) going through a messy divorce. Access to children stopped by ex-wife, etc. Latest step is her application to emigrate with the children. There's a 2-day hearing next week. As part of this, with >1500 pages of prior submissions, the Judge ordered both sides to summarise their positions in a 4-page document.

My friend did this, exactly as per the spec required (1.5 lines spacing, 12pt type, etc). She hasn't; her submission is very tightly spaced and perhaps 8 or 9pt type. Looks to be about twice the number of words from a rough calculation. So obviously her summary contains way more info than his document.

What, if anything, could/should he do? Ask for it to be ruled inadmissible on the day? Rely on the Judge to discount half of it? Hope it helps to persuade the judge that she does not follow the Court's instructions and that this actually works in his favour?

(FWIW, he will be unrepresented, as he is now 100% skint, living in a lock-up unit, etc).

I have two issues with this post. Firstly what were you hoping to achieve by querying the font that his ex has used? Did you think that there was some magic font law that automatically rules in favour of the other party?

Equally why is your friend in a lock up? Find him a room amongst your friends at the very least. Nobody should have to resort to that.

[EskimoArapaho]

Thanks all (well, most!). He's been back to Court so many times, I can't keep up. And the bills got to well over £10000 before he had to represent himself. It's now before a new judge, and he's understandably perturbed that the new judge won't be as familiar with the case as the one who's been dealing with it for > 2years. And that's why he'd worried that her submission has far more info than his. (She's previously appealed the access order and lost there, tried to get the case moved to three different courts after claiming a bias at the local court, accused the staff at the two contact centres of bias and child abuse, etc).

LoonR1 said:

I have two issues with this post. Firstly what were you hoping to achieve by querying the font that his ex has used?

I see I've caught you on one of those days. Same old Loon. Don't go changing.

First, AAIU, the size of typeface and the line-spacing for submission is specified by the Court. As the Judge had ordered that these 4-page summaries were to be submitted instead of the >350-page submissions made via the childrens' solicitor, sticking to the document spec would seem to be important. I don't know how important (I'm the sort of person who would not mess with a Judge's decision), which is why I asked.

LoonR1 said:

Did you think that there was some magic font law that automatically rules in favour of the other party?

If you really did see that within my posting, then your stroppiness is messing with your reading comprehension.

LoonR1 said:

Equally why is your friend in a lock up? Find him a room amongst your friends at the very least. Nobody should have to resort to that.

Simply, no.

[LoonR1]

EskimoArapaho said:

Thanks all (well, most!). He's been back to Court so many times, I can't keep up. And the bills got to well over £10000 before he had to represent himself. It's now before a new judge, and he's understandably perturbed that the new judge won't be as familiar with the case as the one who's been dealing with it for > 2years. And that's why he'd worried that her submission has far more info than his. (She's previously appealed the access order and lost there, tried to get the case moved to three different courts after claiming a bias at the local court, accused the staff at the two contact centres of bias and child abuse, etc).

LoonR1 said:

I have two issues with this post. Firstly what were you hoping to achieve by querying the font that his ex has used?

I see I've caught you on one of those days. Same old Loon. Don't go changing.

First, AAIU, the size of typeface and the line-spacing for submission is specified by the Court. As the Judge had ordered that these 4-page summaries were to be submitted instead of the >350-page submissions made via the childrens' solicitor, sticking to the document spec would seem to be important. I don't know how important (I'm the sort of person who would not mess with a Judge's decision), which is why I asked.

LoonR1 said:

Did you think that there was some magic font law that automatically rules in favour of the other party?

If you really did see that within my posting, then your stroppiness is messing with your reading comprehension.

LoonR1 said:

Equally why is your friend in a lock up? Find him a room amongst your friends at the very least. Nobody should have to resort to that.

Simply, no.

I'm glad I rub you up the wrong way, because if your response to a friend's plight is to simply refuse to help them, then I'm happier not to know you. I'm actually not as stroppy as you'd like to believe. I'm blunt, so most seem to read my posts in a shouty way when I'm lying here, relaxing with a nice chilled bottle of beer.

If you didn't think there was anything in the font, then why make such a deal over it in your OP?

[caziques]

I'm coming to the end of a case (which has been going on for well over two years) - where a solicitor has routinely ignored directions of the court, the good thing is that his "cleverness" has led to his downfall. One submission of mine for one of the complaints to the Law Society was six pages - the solicitor's was 198.

He inadvertently chucked everything in, including an e mail where he was dismissed as acting for the company by the receiver of the company who is suing me.

The synopsis of the full case reads like plot of a fictional novel.

Scam receivership, fraud, theft, misleading the court, acting without authority, forfeiture of shares, it's going to be an interesting book.

[Fab32]

I am in family court quite often and the judge won't be impressed by the ex doing what she likes but the whole point is to get it to a where it's summarised for him so he doesn't have read hours of st.

I suggest your friend mentions it respectfully pointing out that he understood the directions and followed them and it is disappointing the other party did not.

If she has representation it's just a game to them and they will likely know the judge and what he will and won't do.

Did anybody look through your friends submission, or has it been sent yet?

[RobinOakapple]

Putting in far more detail than is necessary is the classic sign of a liar. The fact that her document is crammed with extra and probably irrelevant detail can only work against her. Don't worry about it.

[EskimoArapaho]

Fab32 said:

I suggest your friend mentions it respectfully pointing out that he understood the directions and followed them and it is disappointing the other party did not.

Did anybody look through your friends submission, or has it been sent yet?

Perhaps it's worth him pointing out that this is just the latest of many occasions when she has ignored the orders of the Court? His submission was already made. He read it to me and it seemed balanced (not that I've ever been in a family court).

RobinOakapple said:

Putting in far more detail than is necessary is the classic sign of a liar. The fact that her document is crammed with extra and probably irrelevant detail can only work against her. Don't worry about it.

Well, that's certainly true. Her statement, for example, repeats allegations of domestic abuse as fact, despite there having been a 2-day finding of fact to the contrary. That was held by the previous Judge. As you might imagine, he's now worried that a new Judge, unfamiliar with the case, might give her detailed statement more weight than his by-the-rules submission. Hoping you're right, I'll try to assuage his worries. I presume it won't be the first or last time a Judge sees this sort of behaviour.

Thanks all. As you can imagine, his fear is that if she's able to leave the Court's jurisdiction, then he won't ever see his children again. (She has form, her two oldest children having been removed from their previous country and not seen since by their biological father.)

[berlintaxi]

LoonR1 said:

EskimoArapaho said:

Thanks all (well, most!). He's been back to Court so many times, I can't keep up. And the bills got to well over £10000 before he had to represent himself. It's now before a new judge, and he's understandably perturbed that the new judge won't be as familiar with the case as the one who's been dealing with it for > 2years. And that's why he'd worried that her submission has far more info than his. (She's previously appealed the access order and lost there, tried to get the case moved to three different courts after claiming a bias at the local court, accused the staff at the two contact centres of bias and child abuse, etc).

LoonR1 said:

I have two issues with this post. Firstly what were you hoping to achieve by querying the font that his ex has used?

I see I've caught you on one of those days. Same old Loon. Don't go changing.

First, AAIU, the size of typeface and the line-spacing for submission is specified by the Court. As the Judge had ordered that these 4-page summaries were to be submitted instead of the >350-page submissions made via the childrens' solicitor, sticking to the document spec would seem to be important. I don't know how important (I'm the sort of person who would not mess with a Judge's decision), which is why I asked.

LoonR1 said:

Did you think that there was some magic font law that automatically rules in favour of the other party?

If you really did see that within my posting, then your stroppiness is messing with your reading comprehension.

LoonR1 said:

Equally why is your friend in a lock up? Find him a room amongst your friends at the very least. Nobody should have to resort to that.

Simply, no.

I'm glad I rub you up the wrong way, because if your response to a friend's plight is to simply refuse to help them, then I'm happier not to know you. I'm actually not as stroppy as you'd like to believe. I'm blunt, so most seem to read my posts in a shouty way when I'm lying here, relaxing with a nice chilled bottle of beer.

If you didn't think there was anything in the font, then why make such a deal over it in your OP?

He certainly does seem overly concerned with font sizes whilst his mate is living in a lock up, I am sure his concerns will keep his friend warm at night.

[Moonhawk]

LoonR1 said:

I have two issues with this post. Firstly what were you hoping to achieve by querying the font that his ex has used? Did you think that there was some magic font law that automatically rules in favour of the other party?

The point the OP seems to be making is that by following the courts instructions to the letter - his friend is limited to being able to supply a certain amount of information in his summary by virtue of the fact that only a certain number of words will fit on the specified number of pages if using the court prescribed font and spacing.

By ignoring the courts instructions and using a smaller, more tightly spaced font, the ex has potentially been able to provide additional detail, arguments or reasoning that the OPs friend has not been able to fit in his summary - and may therefore gain an unfair advantage.

Surely you can see why he is concerned by this? It's not just some petty point scoring exercise over which font has been used.

Edited by Moonhawk on Saturday 5th December 14:58

[JustinP1]

Moonhawk said:

By ignoring the courts instructions and using a smaller, more tightly spaced font, the ex has potentially been able to provide additional detail, arguments or reasoning that the OPs friend has not been able to fit in his summary - and may therefore gain an unfair advantage.

I would suggest that someone not capable of adhering to simple directions, or, thinks that they will gain an advantage by doing so is not capable of putting together succinct argument and reasoning.

Judge's aren't thick. They do notice things, especially when they are bored to put their glasses on and squint to see what someone has written, especially when the party has been warned to make their submissions brief and easily readable.

[Moonhawk]

JustinP1 said:

Moonhawk said:

By ignoring the courts instructions and using a smaller, more tightly spaced font, the ex has potentially been able to provide additional detail, arguments or reasoning that the OPs friend has not been able to fit in his summary - and may therefore gain an unfair advantage.

I would suggest that someone not capable of adhering to simple directions, or, thinks that they will gain an advantage by doing so is not capable of putting together succinct argument and reasoning.

Judge's aren't thick. They do notice things, especially when they are bored to put their glasses on and squint to see what someone has written, especially when the party has been warned to make their submissions brief and easily readable.

And therein probably lies the answer to the OP.