A few more notes of interest, told to me by a TV director I once worked with on a comedy show. He also directed one of the TV judicial shows for a while.
They have staff go to courts and find interesting cases. The courts are happy to help, as any case taken by a show is one less that their overburdened system needs to deal with.
Many shows agree to pay all damages to entice the participants to give up the court room in exchange for a tv studio.
On his show (not sure about other shows), they had a full time dentist on staff. Apparently, Americans don’t like seeing people on TV if they are missing teeth. So when they call participants to make arrangements for them to be on the show, they ask them if they have all their teeth. If they don’t, they come in ahead of time and get free dentures from the staff dentist.
I am NOT making this up.
For a while, ratings on these shows were MASSIVE for daytime TV, so the expense was well worth it. Not sure about current ratings, this was in approx 2002, 2003.
PS - when I asked him if the participants were allowed to keep the new teeth after the shoot, he said he didn’t know, it had never occurred to him to ask.
I didn’t work on the show, so I’m not 100% sure, but I was told that yes, the losers don’t have to pay any damages. Remember, this is all small claims stuff. What’s the worst the damages can be? If every single show was maximum damages, it’d be a blip on the show’s budget.
As a “contestant” on the show, your motivation to go outside the legal system – and my guess would be to give up any chance to appeal – would be a guaranteed sum of money if you win and zero out of pocket if you lose. That’s great motivation.
Also, I’m no lawyer, but I believe part of going through arbitration in the first place is that the decision is final and can’t be appealed, as opposed to a judge’s verdict. Just happened to a friend of mine in a large real estate law suit. Arbitrator found for the other guy, and my friend got screwed and has no option for an appeal.
Some arbitration agreements provide for referral to another arbitrator, or a panel of them, if a party is dissatisfied with the initial ruling. Most do not, however, if it’s understood by all to be “binding arbitration” from the outset. I highly doubt TV court shows provide a means of appeal if one party or the other doesn’t like the fake judge’s ruling.
I’m a lawyer and a small claims judge pro tem. And I know someone who was on Judge Judy, so I can relate what they said. I have had litigants tell me they were contacted by a TV judge show and invited to come on. It’s not a decision for the court to make. The shows review all of the filings and look for interesting disputes. The records are open to the public so anyone can access them.
The shows will contact the parties and offer them a deal. Come on our show and we pay you, just like filmyak said. They have them sign a contract, which is an arbitration agreement. Any party to any case can agree to arbitrate, meaning give up their right to a courtroom trial, and select any person (or persons) to judge their case. There is no right to appeal, unless it is specified in the contract (which it never is). Essentially, these court shows are arbitrating small claims cases and paying the litigants. On some shows, there is a set amount of money for both, and the winner gets paid out of it, then they split what’s left.
My friend told me that on Judge Judy, the production asistants would coach the parties during the break to use inflammatory language, thus giving the judge a reason to get mad. One other thing, our judges are trained to be tolerant and respectful in small claims, because the litigants are not used to being in the courtroom, and are intimidated by the experience. Since it may be their only encounter with a courtroom, and their case is very important to them, we want to provide access to the system to make it work. Judge Judy would be disciplined daily, but then no one would want to watch us do our jobs.
**Very ** tiny blip.
Judy Sheindlin pulls in somewhere between $25 million and $30 million per year, and her bailiff, Petri Hawkins-Byrd, is described as the “world’s richest bailiff” with an undisclosed paycheck.
I saw an episode of one several years ago that I think was called Divorce Court. I am a monkey’s uncle if that show is not completely scripted. The staff report says that the shows it mentions were not scripted, what about the other ones?
Once on Judge Judy I saw a (trashy) teenager who she was railing into lift his head and say “F*ck you, b!tch!” and walk out of the courtroom. In a real case of course he’d be held in contempt or detained by the bailiff, but in “TV court” is there any type of recourse for something like this? For example, is the arbitration agreement voided by such behavior? Or can she rule for the other party as if he never showed up and they won by default even if it violates actual law?
Also, there was the case of the ebay scammer in which a woman was committing an illegal fraud (that involved the federal mails no less). In such a case, does Judge Judy have the power to initiate criminal prosecution?
And another Judge Judy question: sometimes she’ll launch into a long lecture on the fact that, say, the plaintiff or defendant has three kids but isn’t married and isn’t even fit to be a mother and yadda yadda blah. While I might be inclined to agree in some of these cases I can’t imagine it having any bearing on the case at hand: if she’s suing a man for denting her car it shouldn’t matter if she’s a virgin novice nun or if she’s the mother of a child conceived on the altar at a Satanic high mass. In a real court, would there be a way to complain about this kind of irrelevant humilation?
And on one of the shows- this wasn’t Judge Judy- it was a black lady who’s not Mabelean Ephraim but attractive and young- it was determined that the litigants had filed their case for the express purpose of getting on a court show and making some money. Does the “TV court” have legal recourse against these people?
And did anybody else see “Judge Reinhold and the William Hung Jury” (successor to “Bud Cort” on Arrested Development?
I seriously doubt it. That said, I’ve seen Judge Joe Brown (who was an actual judge in Memphis) stop a defendent in mid-sentence to warn him that he was about to admit to a crime, and while Brown had neither the authority nor th inclination to arrest him, he (the defendant) would be creating a record that could be used against him elsewhere.
Unsurprisingly, the defendant shut up. Even less surprisingly, Brown ruled against him.
I’ve also seen Brown lament the fact that, though a given party to a suit was an ass, he still had to rule in his favor, as the facts and law were on the ass’s side.
Sampiro, good questions. If a party yelled at me and stomped out, you’re right I would have the bailiff escort them back in and possibly find them in contempt (I would probably try to calm them down and ask for an apology, but that’s just me), but I would still have to rule based on he law and evidence. A tv judge would not be bound by the law (unless it was spelled out that way in the contract) and could rule against that party basically for whatever reason seemed good at the time. She could not rule based on bias, but a witness’s demeanor can be used to judge credibility and that could be a reason to rule against them.
Judge Judy could report a crime like any citizen, but she would have no influence over whether the DA prosecuted the case. Unless she has a friend in the DA’s office of course. The videotape could be used as evidence, which might affect the DA’s decision, I suppose.
I assume most if not all states have a Commission on Judicial Performance, like here in California. They are responsible for investigating complaints about judges. In the real world most judges are fairly even tempered, but some judges are abusive, although I’ve never seen one as bad as Judy. I think she would be disciplined pretty fast. First public censorship, then suspension, then removal from the bench.
In response to the last question, it could be a fraud claim, but if it made good tv, they probably wouldn’t care!
I am convinced we’ll never see such a lament from “Judge Judy,” who doesn’t seem to be bothered by things like that; she’ll rule against someone she thinks is an ass without a second’s pause.
I think you’re all forgetting that we’re not watching the wheels of justice turn in the afternoons, we’re watching Entertaining Television. In this respect, Judy Scheindlin, who has been a family court prosecutor as well as a supervising judge in the Manhattan division of the family court (one cite of many,) is playing the role of a cantankerous old bat. She has a SAG card and she’s doing what actors do – whatever it takes to get ratings.
According to Wikipedia, a source as good as any other when it comes to personal opinions,
Reality court shows are entertainment, period. “Judge Judy” is a character on TV, that’s all.
Although I remember reading somewhere (wish I could supply a better cite) that pretty much everybody who worked with her at the family court in Manhattan still considers the day she resigned to take the TV gig as one of the happiest days of their lives. They pretty much all said she was one of the biggest bitches they’d ever encountered in the workplace. Probably a Dick Cheney thing- by all accounts he’s the world’s most loving grandpa, but… not being one of his grandkids, that’s not how I know and perceive him.
I can’t argue with that, and I can also say that she’s probably not someone I’d want for a boss in any setting. I guess my point is that her TV character, the one that has the same name that she does in real life, is extremely over-the-top and is meant to be exactly that. Her fans don’t care about the law, they care about voyeurism and schadenfreude and that’s exactly what they get. As mentioned upthread, she’d have been disciplined and out of a job if she’d pulled the same crap in a real court setting (at least, one would hope so.) The fact that she worked in family court for as long as she did tells me that she was, at the very least, a competent lawyer and judge (again, one at least hopes so.)
