I once tried a case in the courthouse in Moorehaven. This is an incredible place. Twelve member jury, 2 alternates. Just like for a first degree murder trial.
My whole case was almost struck, at the beginning, because I had interpreted a procedural rule as not requiring an answer, even to requests for admission, because the deadline for discovery had passed. Perhaps a rather technical point. I may have been either right or wrong.
Finally, after hearing on his motion to exclude evidence from my case, I was given an hour or so to search, physically, the small law library there, for authority for why my case should not be held inadmissible on procedural grounds.
I eventually found authority there, somehow, and the judge, the Chief Judge in the Naples (one of the great resort towns in the world) Circuit, who nevertheless liked to try cases in the sticks of interior Moorehaven, to get away, and for a bit of sport with the trial lawyers, eventually allowed my case to go forward...
The other side, later, in the second or third day, made the fatal mistake of arguing, through its appraiser expert witness, in effect, that the entire marshy, undeveloped, and quite remote, hamlet of Moorehaven would suffer terrible condemnation blight, including the subject property, a marshy undeveloped tract southeast of the sole blinking traffic light, due to this new, modern, state funded, expensive, arterial roadway and bridge, planned (and fully intended by then) to run right through and beyond Moorehaven, and requiring some modifications (read needed improvements), also, to the 'main' street through this tiny tiny place...
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