THE ROBING ROOM

Simply the worst. Her temperament has always been horrific, but I never minded this because I thought she was a decent judge. And that may have been true years ago when she was an active judge who paid attention to her cases and spent more than a few days a month in chambers. That is no longer the case. Recent experiences with Judge Conlon have been disastrous. One, in particular, springs to mind. I was recently involved in a complex, multi-party case with Judge Conlon. Some of the parties settled while my client did not. The case was one in which the court needed to approve the settlement. Somehow, the judge concluded that all parties to the case had settled when that was clearly not the case. In fact, my client filed a motion objecting to the settlement the DAY after the motion for settlement was filed. The judge nonetheless approved the settlement the same day the opposition was filed and the day after certain parties moved for approval of the settlement. At an emergency hearing, the judge blamed the settling parties for being deceptive and misleading by submitting an 'agreed order' approving the settlement. According to the judge, an 'agreed order' between parties settling their claims that clearly did not include the remaining parties in the case, was designed to mislead her into believing the settlement was executed by ALL parties in the case. Her interpretation is indefensible and patently unreasonable. The settlement affected the rights of many of the non-consenting parties, so the judge appropriately vacated the order for good cause (notwithstanding her refusal to admit an error on her part in approving the settlement in the first place). But the damage was done and could not be undone. For case-specific reasons that cannot be discussed in a public form, the judge's approval irrevocably and detrimentally altered the rights of each of the non-consenting parties. Vacatur was unable to return my client and other parties to the status quo. By all accounts, the judge works remotely the majority of the time. My only thought as to how this possibly could have happened is that the judge failed to review the setttlement motion with even a modicum of care, and in her haste to get the case off her docket, approved it before even receiving the opposition motions. I am not sure how she is informed of pending motions when she is away from chambers, but I doubt that she is sitting on a computer combing the dockets. Any delay in receiving relevant pleadings is disastrous when a judge fails to review the parties' papers with due care and rules with undue haste. As this judge does. I have come to the belief that litigants should have to consent to have a senior judge preside over a case just as we must consent to have a magistrate judge preside over all aspects of a case and try the case.