And I Thought Arguing Before the Court of Appeal Would Be the Most Significant Event of My Day

I spent yesterday in San Francisco, participating in oral argument before California’s First District Court of Appeal. Actually, I was done by 10:15 a.m., but I still spent yesterday in San Francisco. That’s the second part of the story.

General civil litigation of the sort I do on a daily basis is a little like being on the roster of a mid-level major league baseball team. I’m like the backup shortstop: I can play any position in the infield, and I can hit a little, but it’s my defense (i.e. research and writing skills) that has kept me in the bigs. Being summoned to argue before the Court of Appeal is like suddenly being asked to start in centerfield and bat third in a nationally televised game.

[For comparison purposes, arguing before the California Supreme Court would be the equivalent of starting in left field and batting cleanup at Yankee Stadium. Arguing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is like being the starting pitcher in a playoff game. Appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court is like being handed the ball in the seventh game of the World Series with one out in the ninth, up by a run, two runners on, and the home crowd screaming at afterburner decibel levels. So, comparatively speaking, no pressure.]

I lost sleep for days ahead of the event. I reviewed every brief and every case cited in every brief. I lugged all of it with me to a hotel the night before the hearing, setting myself up at the desk in my room just the way the commercials show it. Even the room service waiter commented on the long night I appeared to have ahead of me.

I arrived at the Court an hour early. The Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court share a courtroom, so it is appropriately grand. The ceiling is about three stories up, and the justices appear to sit on a bench about halfway that high. After listening to nearly an hour of dense questioning in a water quality and regulation case, our case was up. Without any pause, the chief judge of the three judge panel deftly summarized the argument our opponent, the appellant, was trying to make. The panel then engaged my opposing counsel in questioning for about ten minutes, and appeared to have had enough.

My turn. Having observed the lawyers who had appeared before me, I found the button to electrically raise the lectern to an appropriate height without being coached to do so by the justices. Act like you’ve been here before -- smooth. I then introduced myself as counsel for the appellant, which caused one of the justices to immediately scramble through the paperwork and interrupt me before I was through my first sentence to confirm that I was actually counsel for the respondent. Ah, nicely done. Rookie.

I spoke for about five minutes to bring clarity back to the proceedings. Each of the justices nodded in agreement (I think) to what I was saying. I finished up and they looked at me with benign expressions and no words, so I sat down. After a brief follow up from my opponent, the panel dismissed us, and we were done. I have to like our chances to prevail, because I was not subjected to any questioning.

It was all exciting, but even a little anticlimactic in the end. However, I would much rather be in our position, where the Court seems well-inclined to our position, rather than the other side. I’ll take an easy appearance over a hard one any day. Actually, I think the Court used our little case like a sorbet at a fancy meal: something that is simple and goes down easily in between more complicated cases.

So I headed back to the hotel and thence to the airport in the hope of finding a flight back home earlier than the 4 p.m. flight on which I was booked. I missed the morning flight, but there was a noon-ish flight that I could get to … but it had been cancelled for “computer failure.” Huh?

My flight had not yet appeared on the departure screens, so I did not even know what gate to go to. I picked an empty gate at random that had people working behind the counter and asked about getting on an earlier flight. I was put on standby for a 2:15 flight. Not much better, but a little. However, I was about 14th in line, so my chances of making the already-full flight were pretty slim. Then, while I was moseying around, Cheryl called to inform me that United had had some sort of catastrophic computer failure earlier in the day that had affected all of its flights. Uh oh. Well, I do love to be part of a CNN story.

After lunch, I noticed that my flight’s departure time had slipped to almost 5 pm. I wandered back to the flight on which I was on standby to watch it board, nearly an hour late itself. No luck for me. I passed the departure boards again … and my flight was listed as cancelled, for “computer failure.” Wait, what?

I went to the nearest agent to confirm that my flight had been killed. After conferring with her computer, she said, “oh yes, that one’s been cancelled.” Okay, well, what do I do now? Is there a later flight I can catch? “Oh, okay, let me see.” She signed me up for a flight that left at 8:50 p.m. Um, is there anything between then and now (about 3 p.m.)? She managed to put me on standby for a 7:40 p.m. flight. I ultimately found a seat on that airplane. It was even a good one: window, near the front, in one of the expanded legroom rows.

Thankfully, SFO is a pretty reasonable airport in which to spend some time. There are some good restaurants, a good bookstore, reasonable views of the airfield, and an interesting art/culture installation covering the history of audio-visual equipment from an Edison cylinder machine up through iPods. Still, I and several hundred other increasingly disheveled travelers spent many more hours in that place than we had intended, and I had to lug heavy bags laden with case file materials. Just my luck; I rarely travel on business, and the one day I do this quarter, I manage to hit the day and airline that said airline has a historic computer meltdown. As it turns out, 24 flights had been cancelled. Of those, two were SFO to Burbank, both flights that directly affected me.

After effectively finishing my working day at 10:15 in the morning, I finally pulled into the driveway eleven ours later. If there was ever a day when a membership to the Red Carpet Club would have been worth the money, yesterday was that day.