Friday, March 22 I visited the New York Supreme Court, Kings County located on 360 Adams St. I had agreed to meet up with Sandra at 9 or 9:30 being the latest, but in the process I got the courts mixed up and ended up in criminal court. It was getting a bit late and I asked one of the guards if there was an exit that would leave me closer to get to the Supreme Court, unfortunately he said no but he was very kind and told me that if I decided to stay and watch a case at this court to go up to either the 8th or the 11th floor. I decided to go with Sandra because the case she got was a civil case and not criminal. Luckily I made it on time and we got to the room 2 minutes before the case was supposed to start. After all the rushing and hurrying to get there on time, we sat in the room for 30 minutes, waiting, because the defendant was late. The case was about a contract in which the plaintiff accused the defendant of not completing the task he asked for within the time frame agreed on and on top of that, the defendant also owed him money. At first this didn’t sound like an interesting case at all but once you’re sitting there and you hear all the evidence presented and the actions that were done you begin to doubt who was really the victim in the situation. In the end nothing was decided, the judge ended the session and asked everyone to come back on Monday of the following week at 10 am again. I hope the defendant made it on time to this one.
Ana, thank you for this thorough summary! I agree it’s annoying when parties, etc. hold up proceedings with their lateness, I expect the judge did too. I’m glad you had a positive experience and look forward to learning more about it.
Prof. C.