From the Judges Desk
RESILIENCE
By The Honorable Mary E. Montgomery Montgomery County Common Pleas Court
I
was asked to write this article in late December 2019, for publication in the February 2020 Bar Briefs. I will admit, I struggled with this task. Do I write an article about substantive law or an article on law firm security and lawyer safety, which is the topic for this month’s edition? Neither sounded like a terribly exciting read. As I pondered the topic, I could not help but think about the tragic events of 2019 that befell our city, as well as our nation, from the Memorial Day Tornadoes, to the mass shooting in the Oregon District, to the reemergence of the unbearable and heart-wrenching video of a three year old Syrian boy’s lifeless body lying on a beach with waves crashing around him. As a mother, that image is forever haunting. As a human being, it’s unimaginable. His tiny body and tiny shoes and tiny life cut short for a terribly unknown reason. Personally, in 2019, I had eight, yes EIGHT, friends diagnosed with breast cancer, while my own mother hit the infamous five year mark of being cancer free in December 2019. By all accounts, 2019 was a hard year for so many. By the time you read this article, we’ll be two months in to 2020 and I can only hope breathing a deep sigh that things really will be better this year. And that’s what makes us resilient - taking a deep breath and then moving forward. Resilience is defined as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness,” or “the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress.” Wow! That’s one heck of a descriptive definition. I wish that I could impress the importance of resilience on those that come into my courtroom. Resilience does not mean that a person does
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not experience or suffer through difficulties or stress, but rather they learn the process of adapting in the face of adversity and find again the ability to live their life and be buoyed from the difficult event and the hope for a better tomorrow. It’s a matter of deciding to be a survivor not a victim. I often tell defendants that they are at a crossroad and they must now decide if they are going to let their past define them or whether they’re going to define their own path. I firmly believe in the old adage, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Possibly because I’m still new to the bench, possibly because I truly believe that no matter where you came from or what you faced, you can do anything you put your mind to, or possibly because I’m naively and hopelessly optimistic about the future, but I think there is hope for mankind, in spite of the tragedies that seem to consume 27 of the 30 minutes of the Nightly News each evening. And yes, I may be the only person left on earth that still watches cable news at 6:30pm, but I do! Lawyers are some of the most resilient people that I know. I know what it’s like to be a trial attorney and to pour your heart and soul into a case, to spend sleepless nights going over trial strategy for the next day and then bleary-eyed and exhausted, stand in a courtroom before a judge and jury and do your job to the absolute best of your abilities. Not only are lawyers resilient, but they have to teach, in a way, their clients to be resilient as well. Let’s face it, in this profession, not everyone comes out a winner and we have to teach our clients to expect the worst and be happy, at times, with a mediocre best, or to simply learn to compromise. That is not an easy task, but one lawyers are tasked with daily. The very nature of our adversarial job makes us become resilient. Resilience is, after all, one of our primary survival strategies! In the few months I have sat on the bench, I have been warmed by the congeniality and professionalism of the attorneys, both civil and criminal, and not only with each other, but with their clients and in handling the transition from Judge Langer to a brand new Judge. I have welcomed debate and differing opinions and have not been afraid to change my mind and be swayed by a legally sound argument. Before, I could always just blame the judge for whatever decision was made on a case. Now, I am the one having to make that last and final decision and trusting that the Court of Appeals agrees! My colleagues, that is hard! But isn’t that what resilience is all about? Life is hard. Sometimes you’re right and sometimes you’re just dead wrong. If it’s the latter, you learn from it and have to move on. No point in wallowing in the misery. 2020 to me is all about being resilient. I hope it is for you, too.
