Now that I had gone through two judges in three days, I assumed that Judge Wheless would quickly appoint a new judge to my case, because we were rushing toward a critical deadline.
According to the TCPA, the court had to rule on Tommy’s motion to dismiss my case within 30 days of the hearing, which had been held on August 25. If the court did not rule within 30 days, Tommy’s motion would be considered to have been denied, just as if the judge had ruled in my favor.
So I had mixed feelings.
If, say, Judge Wheless completely forgot that he was supposed to appoint a new judge, Tommy’s motion would be denied. We’d proceed to trial, and I’d finally be able to use all of the cross-examination skills I learned from watching Perry Mason on TV all those years ago.
If, on the other hand, Judge Wheless let, say, more than a week go by before he appointed a new judge, would that judge have enough time to carefully evaluate the nearly 200 pages of documents that had been filed in the case? And if the judge was forced to make a rush decision, would that ruling tend to favor my opponents, who had attorneys who knew how to couch their arguments in terms with which judges are comfortable?
It had taken Judge Wheless only two days to replace Judge Bouressa after she recused herself. Surely it wouldn’t take him any longer than that to appoint a new judge to replace Judge Flint. Right?
Judge Flint had recused himself on Friday, September 9, but it appeared that he hadn’t actually filed his recusal until after the weekend. I expected a new judge to be appointed by mid-week, so I was surprised when the week of September 12 drew to a close with no new judge in sight.
But that all changed with a flurry of activity late in the afternoon of Monday, September 19.
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