Valerie Kaye Downing

Valerie Downing

Regardless of what an individual may claim regarding the other party in litigation it still must be proven in Court through civil process which is not an overnight process nor is it "quick" or "open and shut". The other party in this particular matter hired an attorney immediately and aggressively defended her position. It is commonly perceived by people that issues are "open and shut" but when you are trying to limit or completely eliminate a parent's contact with their child it is never and never should be "open and shut". This individual is angry about things being delayed although against my advice he insisted upon mediation once in March and again in June. We were at docket sounding for trial in August and the other party switched attorneys at the last second. This is a common delay tactic and her attorney will be granted a continuance in order to prepare for trial. I just heard from the JA in his case that the case is set on the November docket sounding. How any of this could be attributed to my mishandling of the case is beyond me. The author of this complaint does not understand the process as we never had a "trial" and he always had "full parental rights". I was successful in acquiring a temporary order on his behalf which provided that the child have limited supervised visits with mom and also placed responsibilities upon mom to help the situation between her and the child. There has never been an instance when it took 3 weeks to respond to a call and obviously nothing makes this individual happy. A "long winded email" would be for the benefit of educating the client on the status and process due to the nature of the question. This individual wrote this comment after I told him I could no longer be his attorney. I wish him and his family the best of luck and I hope he is able to better communicate with any future attorneys.