Trouble in the Jackson County Oregon courts

     "I sure won't miss [Maryanne] Pitcher. She's the worst nightmare to come along in Southern Oregon for many years."
          Lynn Myrick, a veteran Southern Oregon family law attorney, announcing his retirement, in an email to Judge Benjamin Bloom.

     "We have been attempting to raise the bar in this community for four years. . . Just like with any whistleblower, it has made us very unpopular."
          Maryanne Pitcher, attorney and partner in the RISE Law Group, in her closing argument in the case against her firm.

I describe today a problem involving the Jackson County, Oregon, courts and how divorces are adjudicated here.

I spent eight days watching a trial in those courts.

Local courts aren't high on the radar of many people, but a problem in the courts is a matter of public concern. The reputation of justice in America is at a low ebb. When courts are clogged and legal fees are high, justice is delayed. There are charges of bias. Citizens link that experience to what they hear in the national news. If the courts don't work, then American self-government doesn't work.

Maryanne Pitcher and Jamie Hazlett, from their Facebook page

The problem with the Jackson County courts is not that the RISE Law Group is unpopular. Maryanne Pitcher, the managing partner of RISE Law Group, acknowledged their unpopularity in open court. The Jackson County courts suffer from RISE Law Group’s multiple requests for recusal of the local judges. The court's problem with scheduling judges is confounded by RISE's business and legal practices. Those slow the disposition of family law cases and drive up their costs, both for RISE's clients and the clients on the other side.

 As I previewed on February 25, watching a contentious trial was a "bucket list" activity for me. It lasted eight days. RISE Law Group partners urged me to watch the trial and see the documents and testimony for myself. I did. A picture emerged from what I saw in open court.

The trial raised issues of a lawyer's fiduciary duty, reasonable fees, billing practices, collection practices against a client's unpaid bill, motions to recuse judges, and proportional activity by an attorney given the totality of the situation. In this trial a former client of RISE, whom I will call Mrs. O, was suing RISE, claiming their fees were wildly excessive and that they broke rules of law and legal ethics in handling her case. Maryanne Pitcher and her law partner Jamie Hazlett were both the defendants and the lawyers in their own case.

Jackson County Court Trial Administrator Tina Qualls, said that the RISE Law Group has negatively impacted the court’s ability to schedule family law cases. RISE Law Group has filed frequent motions to “affidavit” judges – i.e. objections to specific judges presiding over their cases. This complicates the judges’ dockets, slows scheduling, and results in processing delays -- not only RISE Law Group cases but also for other litigants. Some judges who have been targets of complaints by RISE Law Group have chosen to self-recuse from RISE cases, stating that they cannot fairly preside in cases involving them. This greatly reduces the availability of judges to hear family law (Domestic Relation) cases. As a result, according to the Trial Court Administrator, for much of time, only three of the 10 Circuit Court judges are available to cover this docket.

Under Oregon law, attorneys in a proceeding have a right to reject two judges on any case, for any reason or no reason. In addition, attorneys and clients have a right to request recusal of a  judge if they claim the judge has a specific bias against them. They have the right to appeal trial decisions by judges. They have the right to file complaints against judges with the Judicial Fitness Commission. Attorneys have a right to file motions of discovery, to demand that the other party produce an array of relevant documents, such as bank statements, tax forms, and credit card receipts. A judge can rule whether or not that request for discovery is reasonable. That discretion can put judges into an uncomfortable position, especially when the attorneys have filed multiple affidavits for recusal and formal complaints charging bias. 

Some of these issues came up over the course of the trial. Witnesses cited RISE's repeated instances of recusing judges. In this case, RISE partners contended that Mrs. O had requested two judges be "affidavited" and that they filed motions to accommodate her. This became an issue both on the claim of excessive fees for unnecessary work and on RISE's credibility on the issue of recusals. Mrs. O is an immigrant who speaks very little English. She had simultaneous translation throughout the trial. She appeared to me to be baffled by the whole lawsuit and unlikely to know the "inside baseball" of judicial personalities. She testified that she did not know the court's judges and had no objection to them. She said recusing them was her lawyers' idea, not hers. RISE billed her for the time it took to prepare those motions for recusal. 

Witnesses called by both the plaintiff and the defense testified that RISE cases are more contentious and cost more than other attorneys' cases. The question was whether the work they billed advanced the interests of the client. RISE witnesses, including the two partners, said it did, that the work they did was appropriate for "aggressive" advocates like themselves. The plaintiff contended it did not, and that RISE Law Group was on the lookout for fee-generating opportunities of questionable value to the client. The plaintiff's lawyer made the gesture of a rotating wheel on a school mimeograph machine as he said that the RISE law firm was a fee-generating machine designed to churn out bill after bill for legal work.

Current and former employees called as witnesses by the plaintiff and RISE described the billing expectations put onto RISE legal assistants and paralegals: Seven billable hours every work day, with missed hours to be made up within the month if there was a holiday or some other missed day. The staff's billable hour progress was charted on each person's computer and was monitored by a supervisor daily. Testimony described a contest for employees, held over a two-month period. The winner of a large cash prize was the employee who could bill the most. RISE defended the practice, saying they were a struggling small business and their employees needed to be diligent in billing for the work they do. Testimony was that legal assistants earned $20 and $25 per hour but would be billed to clients at $150/hour or more. Employees would bill six minutes of work when the caller left a voice mail: $15. RISE argued that this constituted work, that it advanced their clients' cases, and that one-tenth of an hour was the minimum billable unit. Moreover, RISE argued that by billing clients at the legal assistant rates, not the attorneys' rates, clients were getting excellent value in processing their cases -- better value than is standard practice by local attorneys.

In her testimony, Pitcher said that because of their aggressive advocacy, their clients get better results than mere down-the-middle divorce judgments that other attorneys achieve. She said other attorneys are outmatched by them. She said she intimidates them and they don't want to go to court against RISE, which works in their clients' favor.

In her closing argument, Pitcher addressed her firm's reputation for making divorces more expensive and contentious than necessary. She said the firm had been voted the number-one- law firm in 2021. She told the jury that they heard evidence that "we have a reputation for aggressive advocacy for our clients and that we expect to be paid." She said the jury heard negative testimony from other lawyers in the community. "Is that a surprise to anyone?"

It is legal to affidavit judges. It is legal to be an aggressive and demanding advocate. It is legal to believe the judges on the court are biased against you, and to act on it by recusing them. It is legal to be in-your-face and accusatory. I experienced it personally in a phone call at home which I received from RISE's partners the evening before closing arguments. I had been sitting in the audience the entire trial, seeing everything the jury saw. They asked me how I thought the case was going. The partners said they considered the judge in their case to be hostile and biased against them. I said I didn't see that. They said it was obvious.

I told them I thought they were winning the case. I predicted the jury would award little or nothing in damages to Mrs. O. But I gave them a heads up that I thought they were coming across as billing-focused rather than client-welfare focused, and warned that the jury might also see it that way. Pitcher immediately responded with a sharp ad hominem attack, saying I was biased and a misogynist. Oh. To my mind I was giving good, honest perspective, something they might want to know, but Pitcher's immediate response was to declare me prejudiced against them. That exchange gave me a better feel for why judges are recused and why they self-recuse. 

In her closing argument, Maryanne Pitcher appeared to me to try to soften the law firm's image. She described her hardscrabble origins, her divorce, single motherhood, her hard work up from legal secretary. She said they are client-welfare focused. We take hard cases, she said. We do cases for free sometimes, she said. She said the firm is a victim of criticism by fellow lawyers who charge more than does RISE. She said the firm's reputation for being a "bulldog," or a "man-eater" is incorrect and an insult. 

VERDICT. My prediction on the case was correct. The jury awarded no damages to Mrs. O. That's how I would have voted, too. But it is more complicated than that.

The verdict was on four questions. Two of them were directed verdicts by the judge in favor of the plaintiff on some points that I, as a non-lawyer, thought were inconsequential. There was some confusion or error over a name change from RISE Law Group, LLC and RISE Law Group Corporation. That is no big deal to my mind, but apparently this is a strict liability issue in business names. The judge also made a directed verdict for the plaintiff, involving some action RISE took -- or didn't take -- to resolve a title issue on Mrs. O's rental home. Apparently they handled it incorrectly. The violation triggers a $500 fine. More important, though, is that the prevailing party is awarded attorney fees. That could be huge. 

The jury was asked to decide on two issues, the ones that took up most of the trial time and most of my attention. In both issues, the jury voted yes for the plaintiff, on unlawful business practices and on unlawful debt collection practices. But I say that RISE group "won" because the jury, on an 11-1 vote, decided that Mrs. O experienced zero economic damages, therefore meaning RISE owed her no money. 

I talked with some jurors outside the building after the trial. They told me they thought the RISE firm came off as super aggressive in billing and that they didn't take good care of Mrs. O. But that wasn't as relevant to them as the fact that Mrs. O really did need a great deal of legal help because of the multiple complications of her case, and she got a pretty good result. That is what RISE argued. Mrs. O's problem was that she needed more help than she could afford or wanted to pay. 

That was about how I saw it, too.

Having watched all the testimony, I concluded RISE's multiple recusals of judges in various cases was a policy of RISE, not something coming from clients, and surely not from Mrs. O. My impression of the evidence is that RISE does act like a factory for producing legal fees, as the plaintiff lawyer described. The pressure on employees to meet closely-monitored billing expectations looms large in my thinking on that point. Having watched all the testimony, I don't think RISE takes good enough care to evaluate client resources and ability to pay when they determine an appropriate scope of work. 

My post of February 25 previewing today's post said that the route to justice in America might not come through laws or ethics, but because of judgments exacted by plaintiffs. I wrote that Fox News and Newsmax are now adding a fact-check comment whenever they show Trump saying he won the 2020 election. The news host inserts, "No, he didn't win. He lost." The networks learned a lesson from the Dominion settlement.

Maybe a future case with different facts and a different client unhappy with the cost of a RISE's representation will result in a big judgment against RISE. That might make them re-think their business practices. But maybe not. To my eye, RISE partners looked adamant and unapologetic. They seem proud of their work and they expect to get paid for doing it. Nor would I expect a plaintiff award to change their current policy of recusing judges. The RISE partners seem to me to be quick to consider unwelcome opinions and decisions as illegitimate, coming from intrinsic bias. RISE's current practice may be working well for them. In her closing argument, Pitcher said they have ample clients, and new ones keep coming in the door by referral.

Meanwhile, the Jackson County courts are still struggling to have judges willing and able to handle RISE Law Group cases.

NOTE: The courts are the public's business. If divorce cases are slow to be resolved in a community, for whatever reasons, it is public business. I'm writing here as a opinion journalist, one with a small audience, something over 2,000 a day, 365 days a year -- 75,000 last month. The highest readership days are when I observe and comment on local Southern Oregon subjects.

These are my opinions; no one else’s. My wife is an attorney. She is the Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Legal Services. Neither she nor CNPLS has anything to do with my blog. 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]