ALWAYS FOUND TIME TO DO THE RIGHT THING

  Judge Judy Cone Bridges

Our Judge Judy was famous long before television’s Judge Judy was. She was famous for treating everyone with respect and dignity while performing her difficult but crucial job as a Family Court judge. Adoptions brought her the most joy as a judge and I brought her one that showed how she always found time to do the right thing.

We must have graduated law school about the same time as she was always a part of my career. I remember her being the first of our age group to bring her baby to a beach party my partner threw. She was first of our age group to be elected to be a judge, a Family Court judge. Some judges don the black robe and think its their job to play the grumpy law professor proving they’re smarter than everybody else, but not our Judge Judy. She believed it was her job to serve everyone who appeared before her; lawyers, clients, caseworkers, and witnesses alike.

I developed a relationship with a Petty Officer on a nuclear submarine stationed in Charleston who referred cases to me. Usually he referred seaman who needed representation but, this time, he referred me the wife of his submarine’s Captain. She had volunteered to be a foster parent for a deaf and blind female infant she never thought she would fall in love with her, but fall in love she did. And now she was terrified when her husband received orders to report to Naval Base Kitsap on the west coast in forty-five days,  ten of which had already expired by the time she was referred to me. My legal secretary would often joke when people called asking if I was free by saying, “no but he’s reasonable.”  Molly was wrong, for this deserving and desparate mother, I was free and I knew right where to turn to help her. I walked straight over to the Family Court and asked if I could see Judge Bridges in chambers.

If everything goes smoothly it normally takes a minimum of nine months for an adoption to work its way through the system, but things rarely go smoothly. You have to draft a petition alleging consent or statutory grounds to terminate the rights of the natural parents, serve it on everybody, and wait thirty days to see if anybody files a return objecting to the adoption. You have to have a Guardian ad Litem appointed to protect the rights of the infant. The Department of Social Services has to do a home study and file a report finding your client are fit and proper persons to adopt the child. If anyone does object, the adoption goes on the contested docket and it can take a year or more get a hearing. When I told Judge Judy what about my new client terrified of losing her precious baby, she never said she’d help, she never hesitated, she just got right to work making a miracle happen.

She picked up the phone and got the DSS Supervisor on the phone. The supervisor was familiar with the case and eager to help. The supervisor explained the parental rights of the infant’s mother and father had already been terminated and DSS had sole custody of the baby which would certainly help speed things up. She would accept service of an adoption petition and have the DSS attorney file a return to the Petition within twenty-four hours. Judge Bridges asked how long it would take to do a home study, but the supervisor said she wasn’t sure. When the supervisor offered to find out, Judge Bridges asked for the name of the caseworker who did home studies and said she’d call herself. She buzzed for her secretary to bring her calendar into her office and to get the home study caseworker on the phone.

I spent the few minutes we had waiting to describe the indescribable bond I observed between my client and the child. Indescribable in words because they had what appeared to be a unique tactile way of communicating. You could almost see them talking to each other by the way the mother cradled the baby and the way the baby squirmed in her arms. Judge Bridges’s face lit up with a great big smile as I described what I’d seen.

About that time, her phone rang, and it was the home study caseworker. She said she was backlogged more than four months, but, when, Judge Bridges explained the situation, the caseworker readily agreed to do the study on her own time. By that time, the secretary came into chambers with the judge’s calendar and was saying she was booked up through the end of the next month. She also reminded Judge Bridges everybody was waiting in the courtroom for her ten o’clock hearing, fifteen minutes ago. Tell them I’ll be right there she said to her secretary and turned to me saying, don’t worry, I’ll have a cancelation, I just know it, if not, I’ll schedule your adoption for eight o’clock one morning if that’s what it takes. I’d taken up too much of her time before she said she had to run, I had to get to work drafting and filing the adoption petition to get the ball rolling, and she’d take care of the rest.

I had the petition filed and hand delivered that afternoon. True to her word the supervisor accepted service and her lawyer filed an answer consenting to the adoption the very next day. I called my client to tell her about the home study and she said she’d already spoken with the case worker who was coming over that weekend. The following Monday a report was recieved finding the mother and her Naval captain husband were fit and proper parents and it would be in the infant’s best interest for the adoption to be granted.

As a lawyer I often felt there was a Higher Hand guiding things and this was one of those times. As fate would have it, Judge Bridges called saying one of her contested cases had settled opening a time slot on her calendar. She asked if I could I have my clients in her courtroom ten o’clock Thursday. I told her, since she’d done the impossible, the least I could do is have my clients there. Word spread what we were doing, and Judge Bridges’ courtroom was packed when the time of the hearing came around. In addition to myself, there was the mother clutching her baby seated next to her husband in his dress whites, the DSS supervisor, foster care caseworker, and home study caseworker, the Guardian ad Litem, the court reporter, sheriff’s security officer, court clerk, and even the judge’s secretary all crammed into her small courtroom.

Judge Bridges called the case and, not waiting on me, began calling witnesses herself, one by one putting their glowing testimony and consent to the adoption on the record. She entered the home study and Guardian ad Litem’s written reports into the record without objection. Her smile grew as she got closer and closer to calling the mother to the witness stand. When the time came, she invited her to bring her peacefully sleeping infant with her. There was no legalese in her questions to the mother, just one mother speaking to another in the universal language of mothers . The mother’s description of falling in love with her little girl brought actual tears to people’s eyes, even the hardened Sheriff’s deputy. Judge Bridges asked how she’d manage the infant with her husband’ away on deployments and the mother said the same way she already had with the support of her husband, her Navy family, and the amazing benefits his being an officer in the U.S. Navy provided. Then it came time for the husband. He testified how distraught his wife had been thinking she could lose their precious baby girl and how grateful his wife and he were for everything everyone had done to make this adoption possible.

In accordance with the time-honored maxim of trial advocacy, si fractum non est, non figere, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I had nothing to add when asked and finally it was Judge Bridges turn to talk. She found the adoption was in the child’s best interest and thanked us, with heart felt sincerity, for making it possible for her to approve the adoption in world record time. She acknowledged it took all of us, working together, to pull off a miracle finding a permanent home for a very special child. Everybody in the courtroom that day felt God’s hand at work and felt pround of their part in it. There’s an old Jewish saying, God made mothers so he wouldn’t have to be everywhere all the time. He, we, all of us together made this remarkable, giving, and loving mother the happiest mother ever to walk out of a Family Court courtroom.

I freely admit my trial skills had very little to do with the outcome of this case. It certainly wasn’t my legal research skills, nor my elequence, that won the case. It was my knowing who and where to turn for help. I turned to Judge Bridges who made the impossible possible for a very deserving client by completing an adoption in less than 30 days before her husband shipped out of Charleston. I’ll take credit, even if just for being smart enough to know who to turn to for help.