Judge Scolds Lawyers for Document Blizzard: ‘You Wouldn’t Do This to a Jury’
U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell has endured 25 days of testimony in Oklahama’s pollution case against the poultry industry, but it’s the blizzard of paperwork that is really fraying his nerves.
On Thursday, the Tulsa judge scolded a group of about 30 lawyers in Oklahoma’s case for blanketing him with “thousands” of documents in the bench trial, the Associated Press reports. Frizzell accused the lawyers of trying to admit the documents with an eye toward an appeal.
”You wouldn’t do this to a jury,” Frizzell said. ”You do this to a judge.”
”I wish we had a jury,” the judge said.
Frizzell warned the lawyers to avoid extremist positions in their proposed findings and conclusions, according to the AP story. ”Be reasonable; don’t be zealots,’ he said.
The suit by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson seeks to hold 11 poultry companies responsible for pollution runoff caused by poultry waste. The Tulsa World previewed the case as it began in late September.
