December 14, 2011

Dear Cyndy,

The memory of yesterday's hearing is already beginning to fade.  It was, if you pardon the vernacular, a "dud". The judge who had obviously read my memorandum, launched into the hearing with a lie, saying she knew nothing at all about the case. Then she betrayed herself by criticizing the questionnaire which Mr. Esposito had completed for me, saying experts wrote opinion letters, and did not give their opinions as answers to questions drafted by lawyers.  Obviously the poor lady has it backwards: when expert witnesses testify, that's exactly what happens at the trial. She also opined that an engineer not being a plumber could make no decision about plumbing. Neither would she. It's perhaps my vanity which persuades me that she wanted badly to rule against me, but my case was so strong that she was afraid of an Appeals Court reproach.  She found an escape hatch in the record, where Judge Macdonald had written: "The Court will maintain jurisdiction of the case." What he meant was that instead of dismissal, which he had intended, the Court would fulfill its obligation of reviewing the Inspector's Report. The lady judge, whose name I was never told, misinterpreted her colleague Macdonald as claiming a personal proprietary interest in my case. Far from it! Judge Macdonald had cancelled the June 16th hearing because he didn't like me and he didn't want to have to rule in my favor. As a result of all this passing the buck, my case is now a case without a judge.  Who knows what's next?

My immediate reaction to the hearing was one of relief. No need just yet to draft my appeal. No need to pack up and spend wintry weeks on Nantucket installing insulation, tiles, spiral stairs, wooden floors, finish carpentry, - and all the other tasks which would await me after a favorable verdict.  The surly judge, I thought, had granted me a winter vacation, a Nantucket respite.  But that relief was short lived. Before the hearing, I had assumed that the blatant irregularity of the Inspection Report would preclude its admissibility. Today's judge, however, seemed prepared to accept that report uncritically, at face value, and was prepared to discount the engineer's report because it was legally compelling.

Mulling it all over, I conclude that it's time for me to obtain discovery by requiring the production of documents, obtaining interrogatories and requests for admission, and subsequent to that taking depositions - of all the characters in the Nantucket controversy. It will be much work, and it's hard to imagine that much else will get done. 

So much for current events. I hope that your trip to California was all that you wished for, and that you're now happy to be home. I'll write again soon.

Jochen

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