01/22/2026
On Tuesday, my client and I went down to the 387th Judicial District Court in Fort Bend County, the Hon. Judge Oscar Telfair III presiding, to begin trial in a family law case. I announced ready for trial. Opposing counsel announced not ready. After hearing from both of us, and conducting a hearing on a pretrial motion I filed, Judge Telfair indicated we were going to proceed with trial. At this point, opposing counsel and I went to a room to discuss a possible agreement. It was an agreement that we agreed was in the best interest of the children and fair to the parties. But here's the thing--this agreement could have been reached over a year ago. My client and I have been consistent in terms of what we were willing to agree to. Instead, this case dragged on for much longer than it needed to. And if I hadn't pushed this case to resolution, I have no doubt it would have continued to drag on.
Today, I went down to the 113th Judicial District Court, the Hon. Judge Rabeea Collier presiding, for an emergency hearing involving deposition scheduling in a multiparty case. The parties had all agreed on a date when everyone would be deposed, only for one party's lawyer to say that date was no longer available. That lawyer then went on to have an ex parte communication with another party's lawyer stating that he intended to attend the other parties' depositions, he was just refusing to present his client for deposition. I filed a motion saying that either all the depositions should proceed as originally agreed, or else they need to all be rescheduled to a later date. There should be no gamesmanship with the timing of the depositions. Attempts to reach the offending lawyer were ignored. At the hearing today, another lawyer appeared on the offending lawyer's behalf. We worked out an agreement in less than half an hour. Again, this was another instance where matters could and should have been resolved by agreement instead of going to the courthouse.
Stuff like this is why cases often take longer and are more expensive than they need to be. This is why we always tell clients there's no way we can predict how long litigation cases will last or how much they'll cost. While we will do everything we can to resolve your case quickly and favorably, we can't control what the other side does.
