Just finished up representing a friend's girlfriend, who we will call Y, in Detroit District Court on a misdemeanor charge and got the case successfully dismissed.
The problem is the uphill battle it took to get there, and it is part of why I really detest going to Detroit District Court. At least it was by Zoom so we saved travel time and parking.
The scenario: Y was an employee at a restaurant. Y was the only person there when A City of Detroit Inspector came in in January 2022. They ask for her ID, likely she thinks to verify she is of age to serve alcohol at a restaurant, and nothing else is stated and the inspector leaves.
Y thinks nothing of it, and a few months later gets a ticket in the mail for having an unlicensed restaurant, which is a misdemeanor.
Turns out that while all the state permits are in order, and the City of Detroit Annual Health department license is in order, the City of Detroit annual Building License is not, but we could not know that from the ticket and indeed didn't even know that until today, the second pretrial. Note the sheer number of license and permits you need to just run a restaurant in Detroit (never mind the hundreds of dollars in licensing fees) - and people wonder why businesses aren't exactly flocking there.
Small problem, by the time she gets the ticket she doesn't even work there anymore. The owner who we will call O is not exactly super cooperative in trying to figure out what is going on but after being talked with agrees to help her out and is eventually is willing to step up and say substitute him on the ticket for her as she really should have this ticket in the first place. Oh, and to top everything off, the restaurant is currently out of business. She also never had the authority or ability to apply for a license for a business she does not own, and she's not an employee surely couldn't now even if she wanted to do so.
All of my efforts to contact the City attorney prior to pretrial result in a null response. They don't call me back and no one will tell me even who is the prosecutor assigned the case.
So at the first pretrial I check in with the court on time and ask to speak with the prosecutor to figure this out. Court Clerk says ok and then pops me and my client in a Zoom room where we wait. Prosecutor doth not cometh.
Over an hour passes. I pop out of the room and ask the Court clerk what's going on. The judge then asks me if we have a plea and I state no we're still waiting on the prosecutor to discuss and try to get this figured out. The judge says its up to me to find the prosecutor - on Zoom. I reply that's truly great but could I get a hint first such as perhaps the name of the prosecutor and some contact information please so I have a shot at finding him/her? The judge is like - that's on you and is rather unhelpful.
Court clerk actually gives me a hint at that point by at least giving me the prosecutor's last name, and then the prosecutor shows up.
Prosecutor does not believe anything and thinks my client is trying to con him and is secretly the owner. No kidding. Refuses to dismiss against her and file against the owner. Says it's up to me to prove who the owner is and to contact the Health Department and Building department. So we set it for a second pretrial today.
Ok then. I call both the Health Department and Building Department, and get no responses to multiple calls and emails, I find a Health Department inspection website where I download their record which shows the owner is indeed O and not my client. That's as far as I get, no one returns my calls or emails.
Second pretrial is today.
O and Y are both online with me which is nice. O agrees he's good with having Y out of it and put it all on him to figure out what the problem is. I talk to the prosecutor and he again first thinks I'm lying when I say I didn't get any response back from the Health Department and Building department as I have the report showing who the owner is - which he still doesn't believe. I note I got the report. as I had already told him two weeks ago when I emailed it to him, from a publicly available city website not from the departments directly and I had sent him the link so he could do his own search already to prove I'm not making it up.
I then finally find out this is about the Building License not the Health Department license and he then offers a plea deal of Y pleading guilty with a deferred sentence that drops if she can have the building properly licensed within a certain amount of time.
I note she can't accept that as again, as I told him before, she's not an owner, she doesn't work there, and she certainly can't get a license for it, and the place is closed down. But, I state the owner is present today and willing to be subsituted on the ticket so could we dismiss and then he can refile if need be.
He doesn't want to do that and still claims that I might be trying to make things up to trick him. FFS.
I send the Prosecutor a copy of O the Owner's driver's license at that point so he can see the name exactly matches that on the ownership records and other licenses, and it turns out O has the receipt for the 2022 Building license he paid for in February 2022, but the City is dragging its heels issuing it. In short the Building license is already applied for and there's really nothing my client Y could do now even if she wanted to do so.
He says no we should take it to trial and the building inspector will show up at trial and decide then what to do.
I note calmly that it sounds like a rather bad idea from my perspective and I'm not having my client go to trial in the hope the inspector might change his mind at trial. Trials get kinda expensive and this is going off into never-never land.
Finally, after again my going over all the evidence and the again stating the situation he finally agrees to dismiss the case against my client, two and a half hours into the second pretrial.
The prosecutor and I enter our appearances on the record and then enter the dismissal on the record before a different and far nicer judge than the first one. (note - always, always have your dismissal entered on the record so there's proof it happened) and my client is fionally done with no risk of a misdemeanor on her record.
A great result, but it took about almost 5 hours of court time total to get done what should have been wrapped up in 30 minutes to at most an hour. Sheesh.
6 comments:
Grrr... This does NOT surprise me anymore...
And Y never should have cited in the first place.
Old NFO: Doesdn;t surprise me either and I always warn clients about how it is likely to go in Detroit District Court.
Rick T.: Exactly, Y shouldn't have been cited in the first place, but the prosecutor really didn't want to let it go at all. Took all my patience, facts, and persuasion to get it to where it should have been in the first place.
Is there any point in filing an Ombudsman or similar complaint against the inspector that out of the blue decided Y was the owner? They are the root cause of this idiocy, and I'm sure the next official-type that asks for Y's ID will be met with "why do you need it?"
And this is why there is an impression that lawyers pad their bills, and are so expensive. Because of the bureaucracy that the system automatically perpetuates, to justify their existence.
I have never run into anything like this, but I have experience with the White Cloud, MI office of Newaygo County, with their Friend of the Court. I understand that they often deal with a lot of deadbeat dads and such, but I started with them back in 1990, and found them to think that they were one step beneath the Supreme Court of the United States, and that anyone appearing before them should consider themselves lucky that they even took the time to hear their case, which nobody liked to be there in the first place.
The last time I was there, my 18 year old son, who lived with my ex wife in Kentucky had moved out of his mom's home, and was living with a different family. So I wanted the child support to stop. Or to be paid to my son directly. 150$ per week, back in 2005, I think it was. Instead, the arbitrator sent my money to the woman who my son was living with. So then I said that I wanted my son to live with me, and my ex could pay me child support.
Of course, that would not happen, because my son was 18. So I asked if my ex, who by this time had gone to college and received a masters degree, while I continued to work in a foundry, in order to keep paying child support and maintain my own living, could pay child support to the woman as well, in hopes that my support level would lower. The man told me that the woman who my son was living with would have to file against my ex wife in order to get her to pay child support.
I have heard that things are better now, with a parenting plan being made, etc. Of course, I had equal custody with my ex wife, but that could not stop her from taking my 8 year old son to Kentucky when she and her new husband wanted to go.
I know that family court is a lot different than other courts, but it has left me with a very jaundiced look at the court system, at least in the child custody and divorce situation.
Rick T: Would be nice but there position was she was "in charge of the establishment" at the time as the owner was not there. Ridiculous but that was the line they were taking.
Pigpen51: Yes that's why I don't deal with FOC or do family law at all. I;ve heard tales of FOX going so far off from reality it would make your head spin. Unfortunately the time it takes to sort all this nonsense out does indeed cost. For me it'sa ll actual time and the client was there stuck on Zoom at the same time as well, so no padding necessary nor possible really.
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