Memories from the Courtroom
This is my first post on Medium and I wanted to start writing on a little bit different subject like the memories from the courtroom from the ones I have been writing on my website, hukukyatirim.com.
So, I have been practicing law in Istanbul, Turkey for more than 10 years now and when you enough time in courts, you gather quite few interesting stories. I can’t say that the law system in Turkey is the best one and in my opinion, it’s been going worse for some time now. This makes most of the memories below sad or tragicomical rather than funny in a good way.
Let’s start!
1. Unlistening Judge
Of course, you cannot generalize all the judges, however unfortunately most of the judges are not generally listening to what you say. If you dare to insist and you get the usual answer:
“You say that you wrote it in your motion, Counselor! No need to repeat it now!”
I understand that the judges are overwhelmed with ever-growing number of cases everyday and they do not have a lot of time to spare for hearings. But this is not the fault of the lawyers nor something that can be used as an excuse for denying the right of the lawyer to talk during the hearing. And even though that the most cases are subject to written procedure (which means that the parties are obliged to present the case mainly in writing), the whole purpose of the hearings is for parties to discuss their cases to the judges. In practice, however, this is unfortunately far from the reality. Most of the hearings during the life-span of a case are completely unnecessary and unproductive.
During a quite new hearing of one of my cases, when the judge asked me to present my statement, I started with “Your Honor, as we explicitly stated in our latest petition…” when I was abruptly interrupted by the Judge and he said quite rudely:
“What are you talking about? You have not submitted any petition recently! You come here, in my courtroom and you do not even know your case file and what you have submitted or not!”
I was shocked with the reaction of the Judge and his rather rude language. First of all, I was quite sure that I have submitted a petition online. However, when a Judge screams at you that you did not and it is not in the case file, you start doubting from the facts you know (it does not matter if you are a seasoned lawyer or a new one). Second, I was trying to understand how the Judge came to the nonsensical false conclusion that I do not know my case.
After a second, when the shock worn off, I insisted that I submitted a petition. I believe, we have spent 15 minutes discussing whether I have submitted a petition or not, mostly the Judge yelling at me and I, trying to explain myself. Let me be clear, 15 minutes is three times longer than a usual hearing in Turkey, considering most of the hearings takes 5 minutes.
In the end, they have found my petition on the online system when they checked the second time, which they should have done instead of insisting me that I have not submitted any petition.
I probably couldn’t have done that before when I was younger but this time I turned to the Judge and said “Will you say you are sorry now?” What the Judge did after this though was hilarious. He turned to the clerk and said “Write”:
“The claimant states that he repeats his statements in his petition dated ….”
and went on like nothing happened.
I believe this is not only the greatest problem in our judicial system but our whole society:
We do not know how and when to apologize!
2. Hearings Postponed
One of the problems in Turkish legal procedure and practice is that the hearings are always postponed. Usually this is because a document or an evidence is missing or due from the case file. In this cases, the court continues with the case and directly decides on a new hearing date.
However, sometimes, which can be quite few times, you go to court to attend the hearing, just to learn that judge is on his/her annual leave or appointed to a new court in a different city!
One of my funniest stories regarding this is when I went to Erzincan from Istanbul for a hearing. I live and practice in Istanbul but I take cases of my important clients in another cities. Erzincan is around 1.040 km (646 miles) away from Istanbul. I got my flight tickets arranged a week before, woke up at 04.00 a.m, drove to the airport and caught my flight. After landing at Erzincan, I rushed to the courthouse in fear of missing the hearing.
You should have seen my face when I learned that the judge just took a leave in the morning and all the hearings are postponed!
Well, that is not the funniest part yet.
It was 09.30 a.m. in the morning and my flight back to Istanbul was not until 06.00 p.m. I believe that day I broke my record of sitting in the same cafe for the longest time.
Even though the Judges take their leaves couple of days or even weeks, it is usually not possible to learn if the hearing is going to postpone or not. Because usually you cannot reach the court through phones. There must a system developed to notify the parties about the postponed hearings.
On a side note, I will never forget that court clerk from Muğla, who called me two days in advance to tell me that the Judge will be absent and my hearing will be postponed and said that she wanted to notify me as she saw that I practice in Istanbul.
3. Hearing Starting 6 Hours Late
My personal all-time high record of waiting for a hearing to start is 6 hours.
Yes, you read it right! Six hours of waiting in front of the courtroom.
Unfortunately, the hearings in Turkey almost never starts on time. Usually the Judge arrives late for the first hearing of the day and that affects all the other hearings or they arrange 3 or 4 hearings on the same time.
When the delay is 15 minutes or even 30 minutes, it is fine, of course but during one of my cases, the hearing was scheduled for 10.00 a.m. This was a criminal case to which I was assigned to by the Bar during the first years of my career. So I was not getting paid nearly anything at all. Anyhow, my hearing did not start until 16.00 p.m. As far as I rememeber, the defendant was jailed and was being trasferred to the court. So I was told by the bailiff to wait until the defendant comes. When it was 01.00 p.m. and I was still waiting in front of the court (you know, you cannot leave as they might start without you — of course you can leave your number by the bailiff and ask him to call you when it is time, I do not trust anybody on those stuff) I asked again to have an update. But there was no progress.
So, in the end it took approx. 6 hours of waiting to attend a hearing.
This was the last time I accepted a case assignment from the Bar.
4. Printing E-mails for All Night Long
Most lawyers in Turkey would agree that usually their worst memories regarding their professional life is during the time of their internship.
As in intern lawyer, you would do all the donkey-work and seldom anything you do is professionally beneficial. It is something close to slavery. But it is a process and a period that you must endure while still thinking that all your problems will fade away as soon as you go up on that stage and sworn in.
Long story short, my legal internship experience was no different. I was accepted to a rather large legal firm in Istanbul after graduation and right away started working. I worked before during the college and already knew that the work is hard and you needed to work hard and play hard too. However, some times, some things you do are so absurd that you start questioning you choices and even life.
Here is a funny story about that.
One day, one of the partners at the office I worked for called me at around 4 p.m. He told me that a client would be visiting the office the next day and we would have a meeting, in which I would also attend. I said “Great!” in an excited way, happy to be granted a chance to meet a quite important client. Poor me, acted too early.
He then continued and explained that the Client asked to have all the e-mails of the last 3 years to be printed, filed and delivered to them during the meeting. For a second, I stopped and thought about asking:
“Why? Why would any one want this? They also have the e-mails! Isn’t that an e-mail is a type of two-way communication?”
Then I changed my mind and decided to be a team player and dedicated soldier for the firm. So the Partner told me to get another intern with me to start working and finish printing and filing all the e-mail of last 3 years until the noon next day.
We printed like psychopaths. Non-stop for 6 hours and then a quick meal break and printing again. I believe it was around 11.00 a.m. next day when we finished it up and my desk among others were full with blue files containing all the nonesense e-mails. I was exhausted and barely standing, so I went to the Partner and told him that I would go home to rest. He, of course, agreed and sent me home.
By now, you might ask, “where is the funny part?”.
When I go back to the office next day, I walked to my desk and saw all the blue files with all that e-mails inside were still there. I rushed to the Partner to tell him that they forgot to hand some of the e-mails we printed.
He causually looked at me and said:
“Oh, no! We did not forgot. They decided that they do not need those in the end.”
I decided to quit my job two days later and enroll to a flight school to be a pilot. But that’s a different story.
For now, that’s all!
Hope you enjoyed!
