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Judge to grant trial delay for Alabama game
Published December 19, 2009
A Jefferson County circuit judge’s intention to grant a continuance so lawyers will not miss Alabama’s national championship football game gained national attention Wednesday, according to an Associated Press report.
Circuit Judge Dan King in the county's Bessemer division said Wednesday he intends to grant the continuance.
Alabama plays Texas in the title game of the Bowl Championship Series on Jan. 7 at 7 p.m. in Pasadena, Calif.
In his motion seeking the delay, attorney Jon Terry argues that the trial was scheduled for Jan. 4 “before certain monumental events occurred,” that some attorneys have tickets to the game, that jurors are likely to be preoccupied and that opposing attorneys went to Auburn.
“ROLL TIDE!!” the motion concludes.
King, an Auburn alumnus, said he planned to grant the motion.
“If I didn’t, they’d say, ‘He just didn’t grant it because he’s an Auburn fellow,”” he said. “I wouldn’t do that to’em.”
Circuit Judge Howard Hawk, of the 27th Judicial Circuit in Marshall County, said, “I’ll be honest with you. I thought it was maybe a little too silly to be in a court pleading.”
Hawk, who attended the Alabama School of Law, said if he had litigants waiting a long time for their case to be heard, a football game “wouldn’t be reason enough to continue a case at all.”
A motion filed Wednesday morning argued the trial should begin as scheduled.
“Simply stated, some things are more important than football,” the motion said.
Judge Scott Vowell, the presiding judge in Jefferson County and an Auburn alumnus, said he’d never before seen a motion that requested a continuance because of a football game.
“There's been some motions for continuances and I’ve suspected what the real reason was,” Vowell said. “But this is the first one I've seen that was this honest and candid about the reason.”
The case, Mark Traywick vs. Energen Corp., is the result of a 2004 accident that took the life of Irene Traywick of West Crest. She died as the result of an explosion after a car hit a gas meter and power box.
King's decision “just shows us how fair Auburn people are,” said Vowell, who explained that it’s up to the judges to determine how to handle their dockets. It’s only fair to grant the motion and allow the respondent’s lawyers time to go to the game, King said, because he granted a similar motion allowing parties on the opposing side to go on a previously scheduled cruise vacation.
King, who had not yet issued a formal order late Wednesday, said he would reschedule the trial to begin in a month or two.
Asked if he had anything else to add, King said: “The only thing I said is, ‘War Eagle!’”
Staff Writer Lionel Green contributed to this Associated Press report.
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