After hearing the murder case, Judge CID moved on to a civil matter involving two women who claimed to be the mother of the same infant boy. When the father of a child cannot be determined, that is normal. But when two women claim to be the mother of the same infant, that is unusual. It is reminiscent of the problem brought to the great, wise King Solomon.
When the case was called for hearing, the judge asked the two claimants to stand up. However, nobody responded. In his irritation, the judge banged his gavel and boomed: “I am ordering the parties in this case to stand up and approach the bench.”
Slowly, an old man, about 80 years old, with white hair, limped towards the bench. The judge was more irritated. “Not you, Grandpa. I am calling the two women who are the parties in this case.”
But the old man did not mind the judge and continued walking. When he was near enough, he politely explained, “Your Honor, the two women are now dead. But I am also a party to this case. I was the baby they were fighting over!”
My friends,( this one of the)mine three apocryphal incidents in the life of fictitious Judge CID may be funny, but illustrate the three most common complaints against our judiciary: corruption, incompetence and delay – or CID – in the delivery of justice.
Corruption takes many forms – not just direct bribery but the many varieties of witchcraft, indecent proposals, and bedeviling temptations that besieged our underpaid and overworked judges.
Incompetence ranges from poor command of language to utter lack of knowledge of elementary law. Delay, on the other hand, is the result not only of laziness and incompetence, but also of the abuse and the misuse of our rules of procedure by litigants and their lawyers who hope to win their cases by confusing, outwitting or bankrupting their opponents.
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