Sadly No Zoom Zoom Trial Today, Maybe Tomorrow, There's Always A Zoom Tomorrow

I was scheduled to have a Bench trial in district court today.

I was all prepared and ready to go, exhibits already marked and filed with the court and mailed to the defendant last week.

I put my client in a conference room on my iPad, and we get connected to the court, client is ready to go, we've gone over the exhibits and line of questioning and I'm feeling pretty good for doing a trial by Zoom for the first time.

It's a dispute over a breach of contract. The guy my client hired to fix his house after a fire turned out to be not only unlicensed but also (surprise!) incompetent. The guy's work was not up to code and he then failed to show after being paid $24K. My client was obviously not very happy about that as he's had to spend $26k to fix the mess.

Like I said I'm ready to rock on this.

So we connect and the judge starts off with appearances. Now I've been in this case since April, and the case had been going on a lot longer than that before my client finally figured out he should stop trying to do it himself and needed an attorney (quick note he would have saved himself a lot of grief where he completely screwed up a major pre-trial hearing if he had an attorney then - he didn't and he lost a shot at attorneys fees as a result).

The judge starts of with appearances and then asks if we're ready to go.

I state we are, even though I can't get the building inspector as a witness as the municipal building is locked, their office is closed, they don't answer their emails or voicemails, and I can't subpoena him as a result, but we'll run with what we brung.

Since Defendant is representing himself and the facts are good for me, we're ready to go.

The Defendant then enters his appearance and the judge then states: Since we're doing this by Zoom both parties must agree to do the trial by Zoom.

I agree. The Defendant however . . . .

Defendant quickly sees a shot to delay the inevitable and says he now doesn't want to do it by Zoom and wants to go in person.

Crap.

Judge then says it'll be awhile and sets it for September 23 as we don't know when they will be able to do it in person.

Defendant just won himself a delay of three more months.

Drat. That would have been fun.