It was the kind of spat children sometimes get into when they move into a new home: Who gets the coolest room? Whose room will be next to mine?
In this case, you can substitute judges for children.
As local judges were preparing to move into the downtown Regional Justice Center late last year, the District Court and Justice Court benches took a simple approach to determining which judge would get which courtroom and chambers. They were passed out in numerical order, by the judicial department to which they were elected.
Not so for Municipal Court judges. In their case, seniority ruled. And when one judge told another he wanted the courtroom she had been given, it started a spiky row that eventually touched the chief Municipal Court judge, the chief District Court judge, the Las Vegas city attorney's office and a state Supreme Court justice.
According to Municipal Judge Abbi Silver, who is running for a Justice Court judgeship, Bert Brown, a more senior Municipal judge, told her during an August 2005 judges meeting that he wanted to switch their future courtrooms and offices. He wanted to be on the sixth floor of the new building instead of the fifth, in large part so that he could be closer to his best friend on the bench, Municipal Judge Cedric Kerns.
Silver protested. In an Aug. 25 letter to Chief Municipal Judge Toy Gregory, Silver, elected in 2003 and the newest member of the Municipal Court bench, said several judges she spoke with, including Supreme Court Justice Nancy Becker, had told her that not having courtrooms placed in chronological order would be confusing to the public. Then Silver lambasted Gregory's "seniority rules" standard, saying it opened the door to judges displacing their newer colleagues to improve the view from their office.
"For the future, we might want to order Velcro signage to prepare for new judges or a senior judge deciding they like a different chamber/courtroom," wrote Silver, who was a longtime deputy district attorney before becoming a judge.
Four days later, Gregory turned Silver down in a terse, two-paragraph letter. Brown's choice of courtroom is to remain as is, he wrote.
So Silver took the matter a step further, filing a formal administrative question to Chief District Judge Kathy Hardcastle. Although District Courts are Clark County entities and Municipal Courts are within Las Vegas' jurisdiction, Silver believed that the rules permitted Hardcastle to intervene.
Gregory, in a five-page brief written by William P. Henry, a senior litigator with the city attorney's office, responded that he had the authority to administer his court as he saw fit.
Hardcastle agreed, ruling in October that she didn't have jurisdiction to consider the matter.
Brown says Silver initially had no problem with the switch, and that in the end, none of the District, Justice or Municipal courtroom schemes are perfectly numerically structured, anyway.
Gregory calls Silver his friend. But it appears from their not-so-subtle comments that relations between Silver and both Brown and Gregory are still a bit strained.
Says Silver: "Seniority rules here, and that's the way it is. If the chief judge says something, that's how it goes here."
Says Brown: "We've had some issues."
Says Gregory: "Abbi, she's got a way of making her point."
Silver, Brown and Gregory all downplay the judicial turf squabble's long-term relevance.
"It was a tempest in a teapot, a nonissue, really," Gregory says. "Just one of those things."
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