by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

How many of you used to watch the old black and white television show “Divorce Court?” Please raise your hands. Ouch, I thought there would be more of you. I can’t believe I was the only one who watched it.

It started in 1957 (which may explain the lack of raised hands). Voltaire Perkins played the judge. Every week hapless couples would plead their woes before “Judge” Perkins and he would intone their division. It was real in the sense that televised wrestling was real in those days, but it had its attraction, not unlike watching an automobile accident or a small train wreck.

Misery invites voyeurs.

In researching this column—yes, Virginia, I really do that (sometimes)—I was surprised to learn that the show is still going on but is now something called “an arbitration-based reality court show.” (Virginia, bless her make-believe heart, was one of the early skeptics: “Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus.” But, I digress.)

In my early days of civil practice, I did divorce work. (Yes, I know it is now called “family law,” but that was the era of “fault” and private detectives with flash bulbs staking out hot-sheet motels. In those days, it was a helluva lot more fun.)

In any event, I was the only one in our small firm doing it. It was not because I had any particular expertise. Rather, it was because I was the “low man on the totem pole” and the firm was guided by the principle that a certain substance rolls downhill, and I was at the bottom.

As you all know, the law changed and “divorce” became “family,” the antitheses of divorce, but better branding as the public relations people would say, and now “winner take (almost) all,” has been replaced with “both sides lose.” There is something to be said for a legal system that promises the best thing that will happen to you is that you will end up with half of what you started with.

But as you might suspect, since this is one of my columns, there can be a “work-around” some of the harsher effects of the divorce grinder.

And, Mike Herrera found it.

He filed a petition for divorce against his wife, Melissa Carrasco, in El Paso County, Texas in June 2012. It was immediately assigned to a family law judge. In June and July, Herrara and his wife exchanged e-mails regarding the possible terms of the divorce. On July 12, his wife hired an attorney (Angelica Carreon-Beltran) and she filed a counter petition for divorce that was assigned to the same family law court to which the petition had been assigned. Herrera refused to acknowledge the “legitimacy” of Carreon’s representation of his wife because she (the lawyer, not the wife) was “dishonest and unethical and unreasonable.” On September 7, 2012, Herrera filed a notice of non-suit of his divorce petition, which I gather is akin to a dismissal in our state. However, since a counter petition had been filed, it remained assigned to the same judge.

On September 12, his wife’s attorney served Herrera with discovery requests. On October 16, 2012, Herrara filed a Motion to Extend Discovery Answer Date and Motion for a Protective Order.

Now some of you more perspicacious readers aware of my penchant for eschewing minute details may be wondering why I have mentioned these rather routine and not particularly interesting (by themselves) filings. They are, however, part of the larger and more unusual picture.

First of all, Mrs. Herrera (Melissa Carrasco) had a hard time finding a lawyer to handle her divorce because her husband was well known in the local family law community.

Secondly, the reason Herrara was well known was that he was one of El Paso’s family law judges.

Thirdly, it was his court to which the case was assigned.

Yes, you read that correctly. Petitioner Mike Herrara was the Judge Mike Herrera to whom the case was assigned and who presided over the proceedings I outlined. (I’m not sure why he had to file a motion to extend discovery inasmuch as he could have ruled in his own very ex parte request, but maybe he wanted more time to consider it.)

Unfortunately, this imaginative work-around didn’t last. The divorce was granted by another judge and Judge Herrera found himself on the wrong end of a “Public Reprimand and Order of Additional Education” from the Texas State Commission of Judicial Conduct a few months ago. He was ordered to take six hours of training in, essentially, judicial recusal.

Apparently, in Texas, they have to take special training to know that they cannot preside over their own cases.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is a member of the firm of Millar, Hodges & Bemis in Newport Beach. He can be reached at millar@mhblaw.net.