Law & Business

In this episode of the “Law & Business” podcast, Jim Cushing and Anthony Verna talk about judges. In a recent video blog post, Anthony Verna talked about one judge helping to settle one trademark and copyright infringement lawsuit.

Sometimes, judges are able (under the rules of procedure of their court) to aid the parties in litigation to settle their lawsuits. Jim Cushing and Anthony Verna talk about some of the cases both have had in which judges have helped and have hurt in trying to settle cases. It is a little comparing and contrasting between family law (custody issues) and intellectual property issues and the different kinds of procedure and judges the two lawyers have experienced.

Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the podcast episode:
Anthony Verna:
All right, welcome back to the Law and Business podcast and welcome back, Jim Cushing. How are you doing, sir?

Jim Cushing:
How ya doing, Anthony? Thanks for having me back, it’s been a while.

Anthony Verna:
Hey, I know it’s been a while, but the podcast is a little intermittent than I would like. So, thank you so much for being back. Recently I had an appearance in federal court in the beautiful city of Binghamton, New York, where they’re so used to intellectual property lawsuits. To the point that the magistrate judge was asking me about, about a provision in the Lanham Act that is little used and the look of shock and horror on his face was something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

Jim Cushing:
It’s never  good when you’re teaching the judge the law.

Anthony Verna:
That’s true. But I think that happens a little more for me than for you, which led to this magistrate saying, okay, this is a trademark and copyright infringement case. It’s something that he was fully admitting that he was not used to, but that there two magistrates in the Northern District of New York that have intellectual property expertise and experience and wondering if the parties would want to have one of those magistrates hold a settlement conference. Andin this particular case, my client was all for it because we’re dealing with a pro se litigants. So, a litigant who’s representing himself. Right. And as I’m sure you’re aware a pro se litigant can be a little on the extreme side.

Jim Cushing:
Well, you know, they go into it thinking this is going to be my day in court and I’m going to go all the way and they don’t really understand the process or where they’ve got a weakness.

Anthony Verna:
Exactly. So, I think this was a smart time that, um, that a judge is forcing us into settlement. And, of course, since then, I think the litigant has realized that yes, he’s not going to be going all the way and he’s not going to be really getting his day in court. And so, he’s actually sent me a couple different settlement options since then. So have there been times when a judge has forced you, someone who’s in family law into settlements that you think are good and help the case rather than dealing with litigation?

Jim Cushing:
 I think that as I said, I’m a family attorney or you said I’m a family attorney and I think family is kind of unique in the legal field because it really, a lot of the times the object of a family case is someone who’s not even in court, you know, your son or your daughter or whomever and obviously not in divorce, but in the custody or support context, sure. Is you’re dealing with somebody who’s not present, who’s the object to the case. It’s not just money or like, no offense to your practice, but like a copyright. It’s like a real human being whose life is going to be affected. And when it comes down to it, we’re trying to do what’s best for that person and sometimes what’s best for that person, it’s not necessarily some legal one-upsmanship.

It’s just a practical consideration. And you know, when you have a decent judge, they look at this and they see the legal arguments from both sides, but they’re also, if they’re worth their salt, they see a kid involved. Or a couple of kids involved whose lives will be affected and the judge may think, you know what, I think we need to get this thing settled because having warring parents indefinitely is not good for anybody. And so, he gets involved or she gets involved and says, you know, maybe we should sit down and, and figure this out. And the make the, they sort of make the procedures in a way that there the trial procedure in a way that sort of fosters, I don’t want to say compels, but fosters that kind of resolution over a trial.

For example. And I can give you an example. I had a judge, I won’t mention his name, he’s retired now unfortunately, but I had a judge for many years until I left the family court who had a reputation for holding perpetual conferences. Or conferences perpetually, I should say. So, for example, the court also scheduled trial date for X day, the parties appear, the judge will say you know what, I’d like to have everyone come into the chambers to have a conference about how the trial will go. And that’s where he will sit down and say, what are you doing here? And why are you doing this? And just give me an idea of what you’re going to argue.

And so we would, and he’ll say, I don’t think this is worthy of a trial. I think you need to figure this out. So, I’m going to reschedule our trial for 60 days from now. I want you to address these problems and let me know how you did it. And then we’ll come back and conference again. And, even though we had trial dates, it was very difficult to get actually into trial because he would say, well, we need to talk about this. You need to figure this out. Come back in three days or whatever it is. And you know, you don’t want to stonewall, a judge and say, no, I’m not gonna talk about that if you want to be that guy. And I think it benefited the clients ultimately, even though they got frustrated because they never really got in front of a judge to bad mouth the other person, which is really his goal. But he didn’t want the two parents coming in and like attacking each other. And I think it was you sort of forcing people to figure it out, which is what you need to do in custody.
Anthony Verna:
Oh. And I think, and I think that’s what makes family law unique is the emotions that that sadly come out of divorce that sadly come out of custodial disputes and I think it’s up to a judge to truly keep those emotions in check.

Jim Cushing:
Yeah. I mean, what I will say is, at least in the context of family, I always tell my clients this, that, you know, when your kids are two or three or four or five or young, whatever it is, the reality of it is you are setting the tone, mom and dad are setting the tone for themselves for not just the next custody order, but until this kid is 18 or an adult. And I say to them, if you’re going to poison the well when your son or daughter’s five, how are you two going to go to his graduation when he’s 18 and be in the same room together when he’s married and all that sort of thing. Right? And you’re burdening him so it’s better for people to sort of figure it out. You know, you’re going to have to live with this person forever, even if you’re not in same house. You know, they gotta deal with this person forever. And so, I think the way the judge handles that is really critical.

Anthony Verna:
One of the issues that I think that makes intellectual property unique and I kind of hinted at this in the intro, is that I think a lot of judges… Well, one, I think a lot of attorneys don’t know what intellectual property is to begin with and therefore when attorneys become federal judges, if they are prosecutors all the time and maybe not familiar with the civil side or whatever the case might be, they just aren’t familiar with IP law in general sitting on the federal bench. And, and sometimes, yes, I have to educate. But family law judges tend to be family law experts because this is all they see as the state. Regardless of all this I’m licensed here in New Jersey, family law is its own court there and it’s certainly in Pennsylvania. Family law is in its own court as well.

Jim Cushing:
Yeah. I mean, in the bigger jurisdictions, like I practice in Philadelphia, mainly in the bigger jurisdictions, there is a segregated family courts , where that’s what those judges do day in, day out. When you go into the more of the more sparsely areas like Center County for example, it’s four judges for everything. It’s a little bit different.

Anthony Verna:
Do you ever find yourself struggling with a judge in terms of education of a case or in terms of how a judge would like you to settle?

Jim Cushing:
Yeah, I have found in the smaller counties, and that would, by smaller, I mean places outside the Philadelphia five county metro area, where the judge has become a jack of all trades rather than specific. They either treat a family case like a regular civil litigation case, which it’s not. Right? I mean, it’s one thing if you blow a deadline in a civil litigation case, you might lose, right? But no one ever loses a custody case, right? Or a divorce case or a support case. So, they treat it with like that. And then that becomes very frustrating.

Anthony Verna:
Well, and I would assume that that there are different rules of procedure for a Pennsylvania family case, just like in New York and New Jersey

Jim Cushing:
Yes, there are, but then they treat it like there are rules and that gets frustrating too. So, I mean, family law is sort of in between as it were. I mean, I sometimes joke that family all sometimes devolves into whoever gets their shoulders on the mat first, but it really shouldn’t be that way and the judges shouldn’t foster that.

Anthony Verna:
I would hope the judges don’t foster that in, in any particular case. I recently had a case that was moved to California, the central district of California. And the judge there immediately sent the case out to a private mediation first. And I’ve always found that that private mediation and intellectual property are not all that strong because a lot of times private mediators tend to think of things like business solutions when neither party is really looking for a business solution. Neither party is really looking to work together. But that really to me seems like the core of family law, like both parties have to work together.

Jim Cushing:
Did you feel that the judge did that because he was out of his depth and he was sort of like, just get it off my docket. And you just deal with this.

Anthony Verna:
I think so sometimes. Yeah. I think are some, certainly in my case I’ve had judges who’ve said, I just don’t understand this case. I would hope a judge, a federal judge in Los Angeles would understand intellectual property. I if there are three areas where intellectual property is going to be tried more than others, it’s going to be Southern District of New York, Central District of California. And oddly enough, the Eastern District of Texas where a whole bunch of patent cases get filed because there’s like nothing else in that particular section of Texas. So, they wind up with a rocket docket. I have certainly seen a few judges who don’t understand IP and they kind of just want it off.
And ordered the parties either to the magistrate settlement conference, or maybe the issue is very simple. I once had a judge here in the Southern District of New York who ordered the parties to mediation, excuse me, to a settlement conference by a magistrate judge. And I can tell you that the plaintiff was so angry that all the attorneys like threw their pens down right in front of the judge after that order came. The judge did not say anything about that, oddly enough, but basically, she called on me and I stood up and she goes, “Mr. Verna, you seem like a person who likes to settle cases.” And, of course, I’m like, “Well your honor, that does tend to be our first calling as counsel on cases.” I believe I had filed a motion to dismiss in the case. And she’s like, ”Well, I can give you two options, you can retract the motion to dismiss, I order this to a settlement conference and, if it doesn’t work out you can tell me why it didn’t work out.” And I said, “Okay, your honor. That’s one option. What’s the other?” And she said, “I could just freeze all the dates and send it to the settlement conference, et cetera.” I’ll take option two.

And she said, “Sure.” And yeah. And then I feel like she knew that probably the plaintiff wouldn’t be happy with that. But frankly at that particular case, it wasn’t a matter of of infringement or did my client infringe, it was really, to be honest with you, in that particular case it was damages. You know, my client had not sold a lot of versions of the product that had infringed. And it was a situation where I told my client a million times, pick up the phone and call me before you sell something new, we don’t need to go through a formal trademark search for everything but at least call and we could figure things out.

Jim Cushing:
 So that’s general advice for any client. Call them before the decision’s made so I don’t have to undo your bad one.

Anthony Verna:
Exactly. But in that particular case, the judge saw that we were, despite the fact that we filed a motion to dismiss that the issues in that particular case were narrow. And that it all it came down to was really a number to be honest with you. And while the plaintiff was certainly not happy with the number that that came from the settlement conference, my client was happy that it was really low for a federal trademark infringement lawsuit. It was really low. So, litigating would’ve been a lot more than that. So sometimes I have to do that cost benefit analysis. I had another case that was pure counterfeiting and we had to file against three or four different defendants and, effectively they were wound up being represented by one lawyer. And that was another case where I was like, look, I’d be happy with the settlement conference because as far as I can tell, all it is, is money. Right. If they’re just basically giving up in the case, I’d be happy in front of a magistrate, let’s get a number and move on with our lives. So sometimes a lot of judges have been happy to say, okay, good, you understand the problem, let’s get you in front of a magistrate, get a number, get the case off the docket.

Jim Cushing:
Yeah. Like I said, with family, you’re really dealing with really personal, emotional things and does it surprise you that people in that situation become unreasonable because they’re very angry or annoyed or hurt or whatever. Let me just tell you a story. I had a judge in one of the counties here sort of do real politic when it comes to settling a case. He had me and another attorney come into his chambers and he, and he said, to his court reporter, “Stop taking notes. And by the way, if either of you say anything to anybody, this conversation never happened and I’m going to see you again in another hearing.”, which is like a strong-arm way of saying you’re getting this done.

This is a stupid, I don’t know if I would have done it if I were him. I think it’s a little bit, but the situation was in Pennsylvania. We have a variety of ways of divorcing. One way is the traditional fault divorce, which is what most people I think, think of; that my spouse committed adultery or beat me up or left or whatever. And that’s very traditional, but in the last 40 years or so, no fault divorces arisen. And with no fault there is literally, you’re not claiming anyone did anything wrong. You’re just saying we don’t want to be married anymore and no one has to prove anything. And there’s two ways in Pennsylvania doing the no fault divorce. One is both the husband and wife sign an affidavit saying they consent to divorce, right. Or the other way is if you’ve been separated maritally not necessarily physically in your same house, you’ve not functioned as a married couple for, at the time it was two years, now it’s one.

We’ve not been together as a married couple for two years. And then based upon that length of time, we can say unilaterally we’re not going to be together anymore. Let’s just get this over with, and of course there’s defenses to that. But the point is that I had a client who I inherited from another attorney who I think she had, I think I was her third attorney, which is never a good sign. But she insisted that she wanted to pursue a fault-based divorce, of which there are literally five in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania per year cause no one does it because there’s no financial benefit or anything. It’s just an emotional one. But her attorney did an alternative pleading, which is for those who are not attorneys here, that means you do multiple counts in your complaint and you try to do the one that works at the time.

And he put in a date of a two-year separation count in there, as a divorce and she was adamant about getting that withdrawn. But there’s already an answer filed. It the procedurally it was that you couldn’t really withdraw it anymore cause the other to the other party was refusing. And she’s collecting alimony. So, they’re like, well, you can’t do this forever. So, the judge basically called us in and that’s the short story of the procedures. The judge called us into his chambers, said, you know, this is the way it’s going to go down. And he goes “Here’s how it’s going to go down.” And I’m sort of mostly quoting, but it’s mostly some of the paraphrase. He said, “This is presents to me a very interesting legal argument to me. So, I’m going to need you to brief that and that’s going to be due in 30 days.”

And they said to the other attorney, “And I need you to respond to that brief. I’ll say 30 days after that. And I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to read these briefs and rule on it because it’s very unique, sarcastically speaking, very unique, very niche. So, it’s going to be take, I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to review this and come up with a ruling, but once I do, I’m going to have to schedule a hearing for all arguments.” And basically what he was doing is pushing these briefings, all this sort of fake semi fake briefing schedules after the point where the two years would have lapsed and you would just enter an order for divorce because two years and pass, she was like artificially creating a litigation just to get this over with and we’d have to litigate anything. And you know, my client wasn’t happy with it, but you know, it’s the truth of the matter is what she was trying to pursue didn’t really have any purpose besides emotional one. You know what I mean?

Anthony Verna:
Yes. No, I understand. I understand completely. I mean, look, even in IP, I’ve been there. I once had a case where I filed a copyright infringement suit and then the other side countered with defamation and it’s a claim that was so far out there that it didn’t make any sense to me. Meanwhile, included in my exhibits were my client’s original work and what was found from the defendant’s website, and it was, even the typos are exactly the same, same exact mistakes in it, not just the same thing, but the emotions between these two competitors were so high that the other side filed a defamation lawsuit and didn’t want to do anything in terms of trying to settle the case because of, again, because of high emotions, especially when two competitors going after each other. So, just to analogize, I do see that as well. But in your particular case, I thought the judge kind of came up with a creative way of saying, I’ll drag my feet until no fault is triggered. And, so if you guys don’t want to work it out, we’ll just drag it. I’ll drag it out myself.

Jim Cushing:
Yep. And then again, it could get past the two-year threshold and just deal with it. Cause you know, and one of the legal issues in that case was, and this is what made it interesting is that as I said, there’s the option to consent to do a divorce and no fault divorce. And her prior counsel put in an account for consent divorce. And so, but she was refusing to consent to her own divorce because she was insisting to me to do fault based. And, there is case law that states that if you can’t collect support spousal support against your spouse, your soon to be ex-spouse while also refusing to consent your own, you can’t artificially extend your litigation to collect support.  The judge was like, well, I can dismiss the whole case and then we’ll start again.
And that would just dismiss the underlying support case. Well, I don’t even want that.

Anthony Verna:
Right.

Jim Cushing:
You know?

Anthony Verna:
Right. Because she’s going to maintain her lifestyle.

Jim Cushing:
Yeah.

Anthony Verna:
Or at least that’s the theory behind support.

Jim Cushing:
Exactly. Right. And so, then the judge is like, well, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to make this artificially long in, not in so many words, just do it myself. And I thought, well that’s creative. I didn’t like how he did it. Am I going to sort of paint a little bow on it. His chambers hat had a screen door out into the courtyard, which is in the middle of the courthouse and he was sitting next to the screen door smoking a cigarette at the screen door while he was talking to us. So, it’s very much like a shakedown in like a weird way. But you know, here’s what I want to do. And if you don’t like it, no, you can’t. You know you can’t say anything because I want to see you again. Just remember that. And I’m like, Oh, Jesus.

Anthony Verna:
You know. Meanwhile, the judge that handled the copyright slash defamation case that I was talking about was a former prosecutor and it was fascinating to arrive in court, I’m a little early for hearings with her and see the criminal cases that were going on before her because she would cut through those like a hot knife through butter. Right. And when it came to like our intellectual property case, I had written more than one request about trying to get the parties together for a settlement conference because I think sometimes a good magistrate can take a case, wrap it in a bow and get the parties to crack the heads of the lawyers and get them to seriously talk about what the meat is and get the case done and over with and settled and get past that emotion.

Because a lot of times even lawyers will inhibit the, the emotions of their clients. And I kind of thought that’s what opposing counsel is doing at that time as well. And you know, this judge, she just kept in my opinion kind of flubbing over what the main issues of the case were. And she kept saying that the other side claims that none of it was original. And I’m like, I’m not talking about the concept of what the works are. I’m talking about the actual words. Like if you read the complaint, it’s the words. If you look at the exhibit, it’s the words, it’s the actual exact words from one party to the other. And…

Jim Cushing:
You say you’re talking about the hot knife through butter. I mean, I think that is one of the advantages of like a place like Philadelphia. I mean there’s, there’s disadvantages of course, cause there’s a huge backlog, but, sure. But in Philadelphia, custody trials are like a year after filing, right? So, in your whole, your kid’s whole life is different a year, right? But I will say that the Philadelphia family court judges there is nothing they haven’t seen. And so they’re not impressed with like all of the sort of, if you know, a factual or legal or emotional appeals that are clearly at variance with what they’re seeing in front of them right there, they say, I’ve seen this before, this is how you’re going to deal with this. And unlike, say for example, a smaller county judge who they don’t see family custody cases every single day. And so, they do sort of get sucked into the emotionality, but also sometimes.

Anthony Verna:
Do you find that now that now that you know you’re a father, you’ve got two kids, do you find that that your own angle on this has changed?

Jim Cushing:
Uh, well actually, yeah, I do. I want to say one thing before I get to that is that you mentioned that the emotionality of the attorney, I will say that as a family lawyer, your clients sort of expect you to join them in their angst. And sometimes it’s hard to do that and they don’t really like that. Because it might be wrong.

Anthony Verna:
Well I do that. Look, I tell a lot of potential clients all the time, especially when they come to me and it’s a trademark opposition proceeding and I say, look, this is a lawsuit and it’s a lawsuit only for you to register a trademark or have you like fallen in love with your trademark that that you’re going to fight. You know, and your business is still a start-up. And they kind of like think about that for a second. I go, cause you’ve already violated my first rule, which is don’t fall in love.

Jim Cushing:
I mean, I would say for me, I’ve been a parent for essentially 11 years now. And when you’re in the parenting mode, making parenting decisions every day as a person, as a human being, attorneys are human beings. I think, at least for us as far as I can tell, maybe some of us are. And, so when you have parents come to you and they’re stressing out over their kid, I can sort of offer what limited wisdom I have in saying in 11 years and say, listen, this is a choice, not a decision. There’s two different things. Your kid’s not gonna be forever condemned to a life of mediocrity because of X, because he didn’t get to this premiere preschool or whatever. And, just bring it down a notch or whatever. And I can sort of help with that, in what I think is wise. Maybe I’m making unwise decisions as a parent. I don’t know. But I can only say from personal experience, I can offer them advice myself. You know, now when the kids are older than me, they might say, what do you know? You don’t have teenagers yet, which might be valid too. I don’t know.

Anthony Verna:
Well, no, and Hey, I can understand. I can understand that as well. So, when the judge kind of forces you into this settlement mode, I know that that trying to wrap this up into a neat little bow is nigh impossible but good, bad, indifferent. How do you react when a judge pushes you into the settlement mode rather than trying to take this case all the way to the end through a trial and family law?

Jim Cushing:
That’s a good question. I think for most people, and they don’t want to admit this at the time because there are very strong feelings about the other parent, but the reality of it is 90% of the time, and that’s not a scientific number, but it’s probably right, that both parents are just normal, fairly decent people, right? I mean, they’re not obviously not getting along with one another. Right? And I always tell my clients the fact that you don’t like him and the fact that he hates you is irrelevant to whether they can raise your son, your daughter or whatever. And so, I think 90% of the time, the fact is they don’t want to admit is that mom or dad are going to have time exclusive of the other parent with their son or daughter.

They just are and need to figure out how to make that happen. You’re not going to reduce the status to visitation. They’re not going to reduce them to supervision. You’re not going to reduce them to two dinners a week. He’s going to have time with his kids. And I think judges obviously going into a case, assume that that’s the general assumption that most parents should have time with the kids. And so, it’s really just getting your client to admit to themselves or him or herself. You know what, there’s nothing you can do about this. The judge is just sending you a signal. There’s nothing you can do about it. And I always tell them, “Do you want to be in control of your life and your schedule, or do you want some person who doesn’t know you and you’re just one of a thousand cases to control your time and your schedule? I think it’s better for you to do it.” And most of the time they sort of begrudgingly concede that is probably not good for some guy, which is to say the judge who doesn’t know them. And there’ll be just case set of a thousand to determine when and where they can see their kids. Maybe they should have some say in that and come to a resolution. You know what I mean?

Anthony Verna:
No, I, I understand that completely. It is…

Jim Cushing:
But by the way, I’m focusing on custody because child support is kind of mathematical and straight, more or less straight forward and divorce. That’s a whole other ball of wax. But you’re separating from somebody and so you’re less inclined to be open to settlement in that, in that regard because you, but even there, it’s like the law is very much, with a couple of exceptions, you’re going to get half of your stuff and he’s going to get half your stuff. So why don’t you just figure it out, what half each is going to get. You know what I mean? Rather than having some judge do it for you.

Anthony Verna:
No, I understand exactly what you mean. And not that long ago there was a case that went up to the appellate division in New York. You file in Supreme court. I still don’t know why, filing Supreme Court court of appeals, then excuse me, appellate division. Then court of appeals is Supreme Court everywhere else. So there’s a case that went up to the court of appeals and it’s like, what are you guys doing spending all of this money on legal fees when you could just figure a way to split that money and keep that money.

Jim Cushing:
Well the thing about family too, with custody at least and support, is that it’s always modifiable

Anthony Verna:
Do you mean by agreement or by judge?

Jim Cushing:
Either one. And so for example, if I litigate a custody case and I have a trial today or whatever and the judge enters a verdict, you know, if in a month from now this isn’t working out, you just request a modification and you sort of work through that. Cause there are people who take these appeals up to the Supreme Court, which is the real Supreme Court in Pennsylvania and not the first level and it’s just, I always wonder like why are you doing this? I mean you just file for a modification again and just in sort of figure it out and tell the judge, “Hey, we tried this. It didn’t work. Here’s why.” And let’s, let’s request it be modified, and so I don’t understand the need to appeal, but some people are very much about that.

Anthony Verna:
I have a friend who’s a paralegal and, once in a while his ex-wife will ask for modification and she, of course, shows up with council and he goes by himself because obviously he’s got enough experience to handle this himself. And he basically says, “Well, your honor, she offered this. I offered that, she rejected it, we’re here.” And, the judge always kind of gets angry whenever they’re there in front of a judge for the modification because he always makes sure to try to counter offer and try to get somewhere in between.

Jim Cushing:
And as family court is very unique I think in that, depending on the jurisdiction. But I think the national average 75% of the people in family court are pro se. It’s approaching 90. And so the process is user friendly cause it’s very, it’s equity based, right? It’s not a legal court. It’s an equitable court. I don’t know if you can explain to your listeners what that means, but…

Anthony Verna:
Well I would say that that when you’re dealing with according to equity or an equitable court, it’s there to make division so that both parties are at least have some kind of, equity or are equitable when leaving. Whereas with the legal court it’s, yes, we’re finding for the plaintiff, now that means there are damages that the defendant owes or the plaintiff was completely wrong  and no damages.

Jim Cushing:
Yeah. I’m not saying…I do make legal arguments, but a lot of it is equitable based and so, and so individual pro se litigants can do that sometimes too. And so, I think that makes family court sort of unique is that judges are sort of forced to try to work with people who just don’t know the law very well, but they know what’s fair. You know, they have feelings of fairness and the judge has tried to address that.

Anthony Verna:
So, to try to wrap a neat bow onto this, when a client comes to you and you’re talking about custody, you’re talking about support. Is the client going to be prepared for the judge to use his or her strong arm to get the parties to keep talking?

Jim Cushing:
Well, in my approach is, and maybe this is, I mean, this is just me. I assume it’s okay. I tell people, listen, like I said a minute ago, there are always exceptions to the rule, obviously, but I say to most of my clients, listen, dad or mom, they’re gonna have custody of your kids, or this person is going to receive support from you or you’re going to have to split your property and this approximate portion. So, you know, that’s the legal reality when you walk into the courtroom. So, if you have anticipation of walking in saying, you know, dad should never see his kid again, you’re going to have to provide a really good reason and you don’t have that. So, let’s try to view with reality. And so, and the judge is not going to put up with that,
so you might as well come to the courthouse with, a reasonable expectation of what your case is going to wind up with. Cause it’s not like civil court where if you can’t settle, you go you go for the moon and you get whatever is before that and in family court, it is what it is. Your dad’s gonna see his kids and you’re going to have to give 50% of your stuff up. So, it’s up to you or in this judge to do it. I’d rather it be me.

Anthony Verna
Understood. Jim, tell everybody how to find you.

Jim Cushing:
Thanks, Anthony. You can find me at  FayeRevaCohen.com which is a F a Y. E. Yes, F as in Frank, A, Y E  R I V as in Victor, A Cohen, COH, E. N. Fayerivacohen.com. I am at a 20 47 Locust Street in Philadelphia and you can reach me by telephone at (215) 563-7776 or by email at [email protected].
Anthony Verna:
Jim, thank you for this half hour of kibitzing war stories and comparing and contrasting.

Jim Cushing:
Thanks, Anthony. I really appreciate it. Always happy to come back.

Anthony Verna:
 Hey, not a problem. We’ll do it again soon. We won’t make it such a long break.

Jim Cushing:
Great.