In the petition, my lawyer had asked the court to schedule a hearing for a temporary injunction, which basically meant he wanted the judge to order Sonia to stop harassing my wife and me while the case was in progress. Or, to put it in legalese, Robert had asked the judge to:
“…issue a temporary injunction against Defendant (i) from preventing or impeding access to the portion of Plaintiff’s Property accessible from Defendant’s Property; and (ii) to cease and desist from harassing Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s spouse until the eventual judgment in this lawsuit is final and binding.”
But burying a request for a hearing in a petition is not enough: It turns out that you have to explicitly ask the court to schedule the hearing. And so, on April 22, 2022, Robert filed a letter with the Court Administrator, which contained exactly one succinct sentence:
“Defendant respectfully requests the court to schedule a hearing for Plaintiff’s request for a temporary injunction.”
You’ll notice that Robert first mistakenly referred to me as “Defendant” – but he effected an adroit recovery later in the same sentence when he correctly identified me as “Plaintiff.” Later, in the signature block of the letter, Robert actually described himself as “Attorney for Defendant,” which I was hoping was not true, because I was the plaintiff, and I was the one who was paying his bill.
I’ve since learned that many lawyers suffer from occasional bouts of sloppiness when they file documents with the courts, which the courts tend to overlook. And in fact, Court Administrator Todd Hill did manage to correctly interpret Robert’s request, and he scheduled a hearing for May 10. The hearing was later postponed until May 31, the day after Memorial Day. (I had never been involved in anything like this, so I was pleased that I’d have a three-day weekend to mentally prepare for it.)
On May 27, the day before the holiday weekend, Tommy submitted his “Brief in Opposition to Injunction.”
In some states, submitting a court filing at the last minute is considered to be unethical and unprofessional. For example, the State Bar of California points out that “a good lawyer doesn’t need to serve documents in a way that unfairly limits the other party’s opportunity to respond.” California backs up that sentiment with a admonition that states: “An attorney should not serve papers to take advantage of an opponent’s absence or to inconvenience the opponent, for instance by serving papers late on Friday afternoon or the day preceding a holiday.”
By serving papers on what was both a Friday and the day preceding a holiday weekend, Tommy was clearly shooting for the daily double.
My subsequent experiences suggested to me that the State Bar of Texas is loath to enforce its own ethics rules. But because Texas lacks California’s view that last-minute filings strain the bounds of civility, Tommy didn’t even have to worry about the possibility that the the Texas Bar might consider his actions to be unethical.
Anyway, I could think of no better way to spend a holiday weekend than to read Tommy’s “Brief in Opposition,” so that’s what I did.
On page 2, I noticed that Tommy claimed that “the evidence will establish that Ms. Bryant is not preventing or impeding access to Plaintiff’s property.” This was surprising because it was so easily proven to be false. In the photo below, you’ll see the blockade of planters that Sonia had dragged into place with the specific intent of impeding access to my property. More specifically, the planters impeded my access to my circuit-breaker box, my utility meters, and the windows on the north side of my house, access that had been unimpeded for more than three decades.
Because he had accused me of being a sex criminal just a couple of days earlier, I can’t say that I was surprised by Tommy’s eager disregard for the truth. But little did I suspect that the Texas legal system’s enthusiastic tolerance for the lies of lawyers was to play such a major role in my life for years to come.
Document Links
The easement lawsuit
The hearing request
Scheduling the hearing: May 10
Scheduling the hearing: May 31
Opposition to the injunction
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