Trial Dates set for Civil Lawsuits

[Original post date: 12/18/09 12:00pm PST by Deep Sounding] 

Trial dates were set today at the case management hearing for four civil lawsuits against defendant "John Doe #1" (william hamilton ayres, one time president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) relating to his molestation of young male patients under the guise of providing "psychiatric treatment."

ayres was represented on the phone by his attorneys (I believe from two firms: Sideman & Bancroft LLP for three of the cases, and Donnelly Nelson Depolo & Murray LLP for the CIV467743 Case.)

The four plaintiffs are represented by two firms: The Law Offices of Carcione, Cattermole, Dolinski, Okimoto, Stucky, Ukshini, Markowitz & Carcione, LLP for three of the cases, (They are local) and one member of the firm was present to represent their plaintiffs,  and The Drivon Law Firm for case number CIV467273 was present on the phone.

Superior Court Judge George A. Miram indicated that it is now time to set trial dates for the cases, and as he did with most of the cases heard today, he encouraged mediation.

One of ayres' lawyers asked for some time to "work up the case a little bit" and the judge promptly admonished her that this was a very old case, and that mediation could be set early or late, but that they would be setting a trial date. [In the October-ish timeframe]

There was some  brief discussion about the stay for discovery having been lifted. The attorney for the plaintiff in CIV467273 mentioned that he was not part of that motion, but that the facts in the case are the same as in the other three cases handled by the Carcione firm, and wanted to clarify how this would proceed. The judge asked ayres' attorneys if they would stipulate that the stay is lifted for that case as well, and they agreed. As of today's date, the stay of discovery has been lifted for all parties.

No one objected to setting up mediation prior to trial.

The judge asked if they wanted concurrent or back-to-back trials, and the plaintiffs asked for back-to-back, stating that there might be some consolidation at some point. ( I'm assuming that most of this has to do with the outcome of the criminal trial, and possible settlements/advantages of a unified front that will come from that.)

There was some minor haggling over the trial dates: The Carcione firm was prepared with something like "earlier than that would be fine"  and the other plaintiff's attorney was happy with "anything after October 18th."

One of the defense attorneys was argumentative when one of the dates was set for August 30th. When the judge asked (twice) why this was a problem, she replied "Well only because you had mentioned October..."  (This was the same attorney who, in the last case management hearing, interrupted the judge to erroneously claim that there was a defendant who had not been served, in an attempt to buy more time. She sounds like a real "winner" ... I'm guessing her family are all spending Christmas wherever she is not.) 

So the judge grudgingly moved the date of that trial to early November.

The trial dates are as follows:
CIV467741 September 13th, 2010
CIV467743 October 4th, 2010
CIV467273 October 18th, 2010
CIV467742 November 1, 2010

(The estimated duration is 15 days for each, and so there is some overlap, which was intended.)
[Update: 1/11/10 9:00pm PST by Deep Sounding]:
I'm fairly certain that the durations initially discussed were 15 days. (The judge was querying each side about expected duration, and setting the longest estimate as the expected duration.) At some point that estimate must have been reduced to 10 days, as that's what is currently showing in the court documents for each of the respective cases.
Everyone was then trotted off to schedule mediation timeframes.

Oh, and there were several members of the press present.
(Just a bit of holiday kidding there... I'm pretty sure there were none.)

Case Number information follows:

NOTE: there is a glitch with links into the court document system, and you will have to click on one of those links AGAIN after the first click results in a blank results page. The links should work after that. NOTE ALSO that those case information pages have some Acrobat files attached with additional detail. See the links on the right-hand side under the "Image" column on the court information pages.
CIV467273, CIV467741, CIV467742, CIV467743