An Interview with Judge Michael G. Bagneris

This interview was conducted on December 5, 2007, in the judge's chambers at the Orleans Parish Civil District Court on Loyola Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana.

ROWELL: Will you briefly describe your work here as a judge?

BAGNERIS: This is the Civil District Court of Orleans Parish. Civil jurisdiction gives the judge jurisdiction over all matters that are non-criminal. There's a criminal district court that handles only criminal cases, felonies and misdemeanors. Civil court, where I sit, would handle all non-criminal matters. An example would be personal injury cases, slip and fall cases, breach of contract cases, discrimination cases, admiralty cases, and employment cases. The litany goes on in terms of all of the matters that come before civil court. Anything that is not criminal and doesn't belong in what we call a specialized court, like traffic court or municipal court, then, if it's not in a family court, if it's not in a specialized court, and if it's not a criminal offense, it's going to find its way into my court room or one of my colleagues', obviously, who sits on the civil court bench.

ROWELL: Your description tells me that you're in a position to describe much that Hurricane Katrina and the flooding did to the city of New Orleans. What happened to the city when the courts were not able to operate here? Did the city shut down?

BAGNERIS: We received from the Supreme Court, our state's Supreme Court, the authority to operate in another location. The court was closed in New Orleans and obviously Katrina closed the city, so the court was definitely closed here in the aftermath of Katrina. We're proud of the fact that the civil court of Orleans Parish established itself very quickly. We were able to obtain a location in Baton Rouge Parish and in Gonzales, which is in Ascension Parish, and operated out of that area for those matters that needed addressing for Orleans Parish. If memory serves me right, we were the first court to establish ourselves outside of the geographical boundaries of our parish and we conducted work again in either Baton Rouge or Gonzales to deal with whatever legal issues needed to be addressed at that time.

I might also add we were given the ability to operate in St. Tammany Parish. We had two courtrooms in Covington that we were able to utilize to handle the on-going matters of Orleans Parish, and to all our neighboring parishes which graciously opened up their courtrooms to us we're very thankful. In fact we also rented places to operate the judicial business of Orleans Parish. So we were up and operating. We may have been somewhat separated, and no question we were geographically separated, but the business of the court continued.

ROWELL: How did cases reach you? How did people know to contact you in Baton Rouge or in Gonzales or in St. Tammany Parish?

BAGNERIS: Thank God or Al Gore for the internet [Laughs]. The very first thing that occurred after the courts were declared officially closed was that the Supreme Court had a website which was able to link to a number of other judicial/legal websites. There were various websites: the Louisiana State Bar Association, the New Orleans Bar Association, the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association, the Louisiana Association of Defense Counsel, the Louisiana District Judges Association, and the website of Civil District Court. By clicking onto the Supreme Court website, or anyone of those other websites that I mentioned, you could link to whichever legal or judicial website you were seeking. And we immediately put a message up, or put a message out, indicating where courts were going to be operating and first of all giving people time. Letting folks know, "look, everything that is scheduled is off the books until otherwise notified, but you," with "you" being the attorneys, "are able to contact the court and inform the court as to whether you are ready to proceed in this matter or, because of some ill effect of Katrina, you...