Court Opinion

ID: 9460351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:47:48.032367+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:52.504528
License: Public Domain

WILKEY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The simplicity of this little case belies its importance. At stake are fundamental values in an orderly system of justice. The preservation of that orderly system depends upon the intelligent co*565operation of judges and the attorneys who appear before them. Dereliction of duty on the part of either can disrupt the system. In our country, in contrast to Great Britain, where the discipline of the bar is rigid, a greater share of the burden is borne by the trial judge.
Disrespect for our system of justice is rampant.1 One reason for this is the public’s all too accurate knowledge of the laxity in the courts, laxity in decorum, laxity in the conduct of judges, laxity in the firm disposition of convicted criminals, laxity in the conduct of attorneys toward the court. The most fundamental primary principle would seem to be that a court’s direct order to an attorney, an officer of the court, must be obeyed. If no degree of firmness is shown in enforcing this, what else can be enforced in a courtroom? With all due respect to the lenient view taken by my two colleagues, I must say that the reversal of this contempt conviction will encourage a sloppy permissiveness which can only create disrespect for all judges and our entire court system.
In this ease, the District Judge specifically advised the appellant, not once but twice, that if he were late he would be fined. We need not speculate that prior conduct of the same attorney prompted the District Judge to issue this cautionary advice; it is sufficient to say that if this attorney had never appeared before this District Judge previously, a twice repeated direct order of the trial judge is unquestionably a sufficiently firm basis on which to predicate a contempt citation.
The facts show that, in contrast with previous cases involving the failure to show up for a docket call or the beginning of trial, the trial of the case was actually in progress, the jury had been impaneled, witnesses and court attendants were present, a total of about 20 persons were in the full performance of their duties. At the noon recess the appellant attorney informed District Judge Hart that he had another matter on which he was supposed to appear in Judge Gasch’s courtroom at 1:45 p. m. Judge Hart, being in the middle of trial, declined to give appellant permission to go to Judge Gasch’s courtroom at 1:45 p. m., but did direct him to go to Judge Gasch and tell him he was in trial and that the trial was to continue at 1:45. Appellant did not carry out this admonition of Judge Hart, and therein was his original sin.
The District Court has a well understood rule that if counsel is actually in trial in the courtroom of one judge, he must be excused from any previously scheduled appearance in the courtroom of another judge. All that was necessary to invoke this rule was for appellant Farquhar to inform either Judge Gasch, his clerk, his bailiff, or perhaps his secretary, that he was actually in trial in Judge Hart’s courtroom, due back before 1:45, and therefore would be unable to keep the previously scheduled commitment to Judge Gasch at 1:45.
But appellant did not do this. He apparently put priority on his lunch, returned to Judge Hart at 1:35 p. m., at 1:39 p. m. asked again if he could go next door to see Judge Gasch; Judge Hart gave him permission to go but again advised him that he must be back at 1:45.
Appellant then committed his inevitably damning sin. He went next door, Judge Gasch was not there. After conversation with the clerk, he then did deliberately that which absolutely insured that he would disobey Judge Hart’s order — he awaited the appearance of Judge Gasch to present the matter before him,2 instead of doing what he should have done earlier, advise Judge Gasch’s clerk he was actually in trial be*566fore Judge Hart, and return there immediately. The exact minute Judge Gasch would take the bench was problematical; the exact time Judge Hart had ordered appellant to be present was not. The case which Judge Gasch would call first was problematical (it turned out to be other. than appellant’s case); the case Judge Hart would call at 1:45 was not. Appellant Farquhar was there when Judge Gasch ascended the bench at 1:43 p. m. By now appellant had placed himself in an impossible position; there was no way in the world he could have appeared at 1:45 before Judge Gasch and obeyed Judge Hart’s twice repeated order to be back at 1:45 in Judge Hart’s courtroom.
The Court’s opinion puts the reversal solely and squarely on the lack of the “requisite criminal intent to commit the crime of contempt.” The authorities are legion that a person is presumed to intend the logical and necessary consequences of his act. The logical, necessary and inevitable consequence of appellant Farquhar’s act in waiting to see Judge Gasch would be that he would be unable to see Judge Hart in a separate place at the same time. One of the earliest laws of physics worked out by the ancient Greeks is that a person cannot be in two separate locations simultaneously. Unless appellant Farquhar wishes to dispute or plead ignorance of this principle, he cannot be heard to say that he did not intend, when he remained in Judge Gasch’s courtroom at 1:45, to be absent from Judge Hart’s courtroom at the same instant.
There is very recent authority in this jurisdiction squarely in point. In In Re Niblack3 “. . . Niblack disobeyed the order that he be in court at a specified hour to proceed with a hearing. . . .We think the record in this case justifies the conclusion that the appellant’s conduct was in reckless and wilful disregard of the court’s order that he appear promptly for the scheduled hearing. Thus, the record supports the finding that the appellant’s disobedience of the court’s order met the test of criminal intent applied in Sykes v. U. S.”4
Perhaps even more squarely in point is an even more recent case, In re Gates.5 The guilty attorney did just what Farquhar did in this case. He was aware of a conflict in his schedule, and went to the Magistrate’s office instead of appearing at 10:00 a. m. before the District Judge as directed. He sought to justify his conduct on the ground that the District Court knew that he had a preliminary matter. He was advised by the Court: “I think you have been contemptuous. I knew you had a preliminary matter but I advised you to be here at 10 a. m. in Court.”6 On appeal this court held “[n]or can we accept the contention that there was insufficiency of evidence of contumacious intent to support the finding of contempt by the trial judge.”7
The principles enunciated most recently in Gates, Niblack and Sykes call for affirmance of the District Court’s action here. It would be hard to postulate a more clear and direct order of a District Judge, twice repeated, and more knowingly or intentionally violated by an attorney who placed himself at another location at the moment appointed for his appearance in the trial in which he was already engaged.
I would affirm.

. See the writer’s “Proposal For a ‘United States Bar’ ”, 58 A.B.A. Journal 355, April 1972.

. Judge Gasch was not then present, only his clerk. The clerk could advise, but not command. The erroneous decision to remain was made of appellant’s own free will.

. 156 U.S.App.D.C. 20, 476 F.2d 930 (8 March 1973).

. 144 U.S.App.D.C. 53, 444 F.2d 928 (1971).

. 156 U.S.App.D.C. 88, 478 F.2d 998 (7 May 1973).

. 478 F.2d at 999.

. Id. at 1000.