We got a 3-week civil jury trial yesterday. Today we’re starting jury selection. I was dreading this because a case this complicated (6 attorneys in the courtroom representing plaintiff, multiple corporation defendants and individual cross-defendants) means I’ll have to REALLY stay on top of it, the exhibits will likely be crazy. However, I have to leave at 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. during session to pump. I won’t have the jury room to use for that, since we’re going to have jurors, so I’ll have to go elsewhere to pump, which will add to the time away. When I come back, I’ll have a hard time catching up without Louise’s transcriptions coming through my computer on realtime so I can see who a witness is, what rulings have been made, what exhibits have been introduced, etc. This is our first trial without a regular assigned building court reporter, thanks to new provisions in place due to the state of California’s fiscal shortfalls.

Our regular reporter Louise has been clearing out her office, getting ready for being a full-time floater reporter starting Monday. She will be at the mercy of her headquarter offices, and has to call in each morning to see where in the entire County of Los Angeles they decide to send her for the day. She may be driving 2 hours away if they decide there’s a need in Lancaster, for example.
Louise is here today finishing up her packing, and very nicely has helped the private reporter that the attorneys have hired with plugging into the realtime equipment, giving her a heads up on the habits and likes of the judge, etc. The floater reporter, thank goodness, does do realtime and it has been working all morning. She kept commenting how nice Louise is to her, and it’s true. Other building reporters whose positions have been closed and are being replaced by private reporters on hire by each trial’s attorneys have been resentful. One refused to help the outside reporter connect his equipment with realtime for her judge. She threw a fit when her bailiff allowed the outside reporter to use employee restrooms in the back hallway. She raised problems about security if outside reporters are given access to our hallways and are plugging into judges’ networks to provide realtime feeds. Louise was surprised by their actions; she feels that it’s not these individual reporters who are the cause of the courts shutting down court reporter positions and laying off court reporters. She said it’s hard enough floating into a foreign environment, especially knowing you may not be welcome. She made herself available to the very grateful outside reporter for questions and tips. The more resentful reporter who made the waves in the building later asked a bailiff, “Should I have helped with the realtime connection when the judge asked me to?”
The bailiff responded that as with any situation she comes across when she finds someone that needs help, she has two choices. If she were to see someone laying on the sidewalk in front of her when she’s walking by, does she (1) stop to see if the person is okay, and whether she can offer assistance or get help? Or does she (2) just keep walking and pretend she doesn’t see the person? I guess it’s not as simple as that in this situation, though. The replaced court reporter has to put aside any hurt ego and help an ex-staff have a smoother transition to a stranger who’s doing a job that she had been doing for years and did not voluntarily leave. Another reporter described how she feels about the whole situation as “betrayed.” It’s just all pretty sad stuff. Damn housing crisis that started this whole downward financial spiral worldwide. (Okay, I know it’s more complicated than that.)

It’s Friday, we’re going to have angry jurors who thought they were going to get away with not having to serve jury duty until they got notice to come in the very last day of their on-call week, and I’d much rather spend it hanging out with my ex-(sob) court reporter, Louise, for the last time than stuck in the beginning of a 3-week-long trial about a yard sprinkler system that injured someone.