‘Oh dear, this is hopeless’
Running a ‘virtual’ court online in a lockdown sounded fine in theory but the reality had one judge heading back to bricks and mortar.
As windows opened and closed seemingly randomly to a ‘‘virtual meeting room’’ Court of Appeal hearing during level four lockdown, at least one of the three judges was quietly exasperated.
‘‘Oh dear, this is hopeless,’’ Justice Murray
Gilbert sighed.
Justice Robert Dobson repeatedly had to use semaphore signals to indicate he couldn’t hear.
After being tipped out of the meeting a couple of times, and having a cellphone conversation on screen with the senior judge in the ‘‘room’’, the hearing adjourned while Dobson gave up on the virtual world, got in his car and drove to the courtroom closest to his Wellington home.
But as soon as he arrived, Justice Brendan Brown and one of the lawyers disappeared.
The virtual meeting room system is being used to keep the courts running in level four lockdown and level three while reducing the need for lawyers, judges and others to attend in person.
Its use has not been seamless though. Hearings had to be halted with each disconnection so no-one missed anything.
Lawyers also disappeared from time to time, and one man whose case was being argued never got to ‘‘attend’’ at all, because the prison housing him did not have enough audio-visual booths.
His lawyer, Craig Ruane, said the prisoner wanted to hear his appeal, and Justice Brown said if it had been a different type of hearing his absence might have scuppered the whole thing for the time being, but Ruane did not press for that so they continued, off and on.
It was not the first time the technology has confounded the virtual meeting room hearings. Several others at the Court of Appeal have had late starts or interruptions.
But on the first day of level three on Tuesday, two Wellington-based judges returned to the court in person and aside from one brief glitch the biggest delay came from traffic north of Wellington putting one judge behind schedule.
On the second day, Spark, which supports the system, took a bit of a ribbing. When three of the lawyers disappeared yesterday the remaining attendees stopped talking about the case and started talking about Spark.
A notice on the courts website said the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal would continue hearings during the lockdown using a ‘‘web browser-based video conferencing system supported by the Ministry of Justice and Spark’’.