Limitations Read Online Free PDF Page B

the rare case when they sit together en banc. With Koll here, Summer has taken a chair a good ten feet away, and George follows suit on the opposite side.
    As the senior judge on the panel, George presides and calls the cases for discussion in the order they were heard this morning. Usually the work of the court is divided evenly between civil and criminal matters and, more pointedly, justice at the American extremes, for the very rich and for the very poor. As a rule, civil appeals make sense only when the financial or personal stakes are high, because the appellant has to post a bond guaranteeing that the trial court winner will be paid, then foot the bill for an attorney to comb the record looking for mistakes.
    On the criminal side, the matters reflect the realities of the courtrooms downstairs, where the defendants are overwhelmingly poor young males, represented by state-paid counsel. In nine cases out of ten, the decision of the appellate court will be the last real chance for men sentenced to significant prison terms. The state Supreme Court rarely grants further review in criminal matters. George’s job is not to rejudge these cases for the jury. But he takes with a solemnity approaching religious commitment his obligation to be able to say, all things considered, that the defendant was convicted fairly.
    The three judges move through the civil cases argued in advance of Warnovits without much debate. The first two, a child custody dispute and a fight over air rights between two corporations, are affirmances; the third, a $9 million personal-injury verdict against a furnace manufacturer, must be set aside because the trial judge, a lunkhead named Myron Spiro, whom the appellate court often reverses, disallowed a lawful defense. As presiding judge, George has the right to decide who will author the court’s opinions in these cases, but his practice is to await volunteers, and Nathan, predictably, says he’s willing to do all three. Koll writes like the wind, seldom needing much help from his clerks, and it is sometimes an irresistible temptation to let him do most of the work. But Summer wants the custody case, and Nathan defers on that, taking the other two. Privately, George is delighted that Koll will handle the reversal of the furnace verdict, because Nathan will not resist subjecting Spiro to the ridicule he deserves.
    “All right,” says George. “Let’s earn the big bucks. Warnovits.”
    As the presiding judge, George has the right to speak first, but he remains mysteriously confused and heavyhearted about the matter. Instead, he turns to Koll.
    “Nathan, I need to hear more about this business you brought up at the end of the oral argument concerning the state eavesdropping statute.”
    In truth, George knows all he needs to, because the motives were plain. Koll, ever-victorious, had figured out a way to demonstrate to the packed courtroom, including the full row of press, that the celebrated Jordan Sapperstein had overlooked a winning argument.
    An added victim of this display was the time-ravaged warhorse who had followed Sapperstein to the podium to argue for the state, Tommy Molto. The judges of the Kindle County Superior Court recently appointed Tommy the County’s acting Prosecuting Attorney, making him the second successor to the unexpired term of the elected P.A. Muriel Wynn, who had barely warmed the chair before mounting a successful campaign for state Attorney General. The first interim P.A., Horace Donnelly, had resigned after about four months, when the Tribune discovered that he had left markers on the state’s riverboat casinos that totaled twice his annual salary. Molto was the safe choice, a relentless and unforgiving career prosecutor who by now seems destined to die of elevated blood pressure in the midst of some courtroom harangue about the miserable shortcomings of a defendant.
    Today, Tommy was making a point by his presence, showing that the P.A.’s office gave Warnovits