THE ROBING ROOM

I had Judge Eick for a settlement conference in a civil rights case gone ugly. In the first interactive part of the conference, he addressed both sides from the bench and was not shy about calling out defects in the parties’ cases (in very thoughtful ways). He’ll actually ask a party “what witnesses do you have in-hand to put before a jury to refute/prove XYZ?” And when he gets a nonsense answer, he points it out. It successfully got one unrealistic party with a difficult personality to come down from outer space on a demand. Didn’t settle, but he really tried.