Party-Line Plea

Telephoning the bench

It was Christmas Eve. Phoenix Attorney Don Wilson wanted to postpone a February trial, but he hoped to avoid spending 45 minutes driving back and forth to court just to take part in a two-minute hearing. So Wilson picked up the telephone and made his pitch, successfully, in a conference call involving two other lawyers and the judge.

Party-line pleading dates from 1970, when judges in California agencies began accepting such calls. It has caught on with municipal, state and federal judges elsewhere--notably in Arizona's sprawling Maricopa County, where heavy floods a year ago limited travel and thus created a perfect test for the idea. While saving considerable time and money, "it doesn't cut down the effectiveness of the advocacy at all," says Thomas Kleinschmidt, a superior court judge in Phoenix. The technique is used for various proceedings, including hearings on the admission of evidence, the trial schedule and the parties' rights to documents from their opponents' files.

Some judges have a special wrinkle to ensure objectivity: if an attorney is present when his opponent phones in, he is asked to leave the judge and go to a telephone also, in order not to gain an unfair advantage through body language.

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