Time

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

I once had the opportunity of experiencing a hearing involving an Estate that took about 4 years to resolve. The hearing would start, go on for a couple of days and then be delayed because of adjournments, motions, etc. etc. By the time it came to final submissions I had approximatley six boxes of documents that had been collected and/or referred to as exhibits. It did not help that the individual on the other side of the matter was a retired judge and he had very little at stake in terms of the costs of the hearing.

At the end of the hearing, the other individual went through all of the documents and summed up his position. When my time came I stood up, straightened out my barrister’s robes, tighted my “power belt” (I had suffered another injury to my back and besides chiropractic care, I had been prescribed the use of the power belt – every time I stood up it looked as though I was tightening a gun belt!), looked at the massive amount of documents spread over the counsel table and then had an epithany. I decided to ignore the documents.

I began by indicating to His Honour that we are all born with really only one thing in common. We might have different colour hair (or none at all), be of different colour tones, have different colour eyes, different sizes, weights, genders but we all have one thing in common – we all, each one of us, has only 24 hours in a day, and no one should be able to take that away from us. We had just spent days, weeks, months and years involved in a matter that could have been resolved in two to three days and it was unconsionable that the entire court system was being held hostage to deal with a matter that involved so little but cost so much. Not only was the Judge interested in the summation, but I actually guarnered the attention of the elderly clerks who assist in the proceedings but are gnerally bored to tears. At the end of the day, I was personally fulfilled, the retired judge was upset and the court exercised its discretion in recognizing that the matter had been dragged on for far too long.

The moral of the story is simple. Guard your time and use it wisely. And like any other asset or investment make sure that you control it and it is not wasted foolishly in the hands of others.