For example, I had a Hague case where the defendant had sued for divorce in a state to which the petitioner had no connection. The petitioner s lawyer filed the Hague petition as part of the ongoing divorce case, and filed an answer to the divorce so that she would not be in default. This subjected her to property division here, although she had no money to hire a lawyer for that. In contrast, as part of settling the Norwegian case mentioned above, we agreed on a support modification but were careful to word the agreement as a contract made in Norway, to avoid creating support jurisdiction here. But sometimes the case doesn t remain limited.
Judges are sometimes human an alarming tendency that some lawyers stoop to encourage.
You never can tell what s going to happen in a case. Fortunately, the judge didn t see what that had to do with jurisdiction, and was irritated at having his time wasted with attempts to put the conviction in evidence. He even told us what the law on vehicle registration was in that state. It is often important to remind the court that these dry procedural rules have reasons behind them, and that human interests in justice and well-informed, fair, truly adversarial adjudication are what these procedures are trying to protect. Also, you may have to succumb to the general principle that the best defense is an attack.