We have another incident of texting in court. Miami Judge Scott Silverman went justifiably ballistic when he discovered a witness, Gavin Sussman, messaging another witness in the courtroom. He declared a mistrial in the contracts case.
Sussman was chief operating officer for the plaintiff, Sky Development, and decided to text message Yizhak Toledano, another company executive and witness. The messages dealt with the dispute over the alleged misrepresentation of the sale of condos.
Judge Silverman stated “Let me be really frank about this. I never had this happen before. This is completely outrageous, absolutely outrageous.”
Toledano insisted “It was on a break.” To which Silverman stated the obvious: “It doesn’t matter. You are communicating about the case and the subject matter of the case with a witness who is currently under oath and before the jury.”
Toledano responded by saying: “I’m sorry, after we took the break, it’s not in the middle.”
Silverman:”It’s a problem on your communicating with the witness about his testimony whether it’s before the break, after the break and during the break while he’s testifying. This is outrageous.”
Opposing counsel stated publicly that Sussman has been previously told not to engage in such texting. William Petros stated that Sussman was chastised by a magistrate who served as a referee at a March 9 deposition for passing a note to the witness.
Recently, a Utah woman was sent away for 30 days for text messaging her husband from a courtroom, here.
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Well I hope it was worth it. I wonder why the Judge only declared a mistrial. Maybe a directed verdict should have been more appropriate.
I am who I am today at least.
Those who choose to constantly text are too lazy to pick up the phone and talk to someone. And it’s also flat out rude
Sally,
Give me a break. Not much good comes out of texting? 75 billion text messages sent in June 2008 would like to disagree with you http://www.cellsigns.com/industry.shtml
Even if those numbers are somewhat inflated, you can’t deny that it is a pervasive communication mechanism. Just because a few users don’t think when they text is not a reason to daemonize the entire platform.
I figured that’s what you intended to say!
Oops make that “here” not “her.”
“Click Her A**hole,” as in you’ll be clicking in jail.
Mespo….
What is CHA? Covering his ass?
More like CHA, I’d say.
We never had this problem before the dang telephone. It all started with that vicious useless gossip spreading machine….
Texting has only caused people trouble. Not much good has come out if it.
We have seen people getting into trouble for sending messages to the wrong people, sending inappropriate photos of themselves, texting while driving and causing an accident, students texting and cheating on tests and the list could go on and on from here!