Today, I accompanied three of the litigators from my law firm to the Supreme Court of Nepal. One of our clients’ cases was before a two-justice panel. One of the two is in line for Chief Justice in about two years. The position is decided by seniority in Nepal. I was going to observe.
I went to grab my briefcase as we headed out the door, but founding partner of Gandhi & Associates, Gandhi Pandit, told me there was no need to bring it. It would be too heavy and where we were going was walking distance.
We arrived around 12:30 in the afternoon. Gandhi showed me around. We could not walk more than a few paces without someone recognizing him or him recognizing someone else, so I met a lot of new people, all attorneys.
The building, where the administrative offices and some of the nicer courtrooms were located, had been condemned following April’s earthquakes. The Nepal Bar Association also has a building in the same complex. A few of the administrative offices are temporarily relocated in the ground floor of this building and the top floor is the Bar’s café, where we spent most of our time, waiting and drinking tea and coffee.
We checked the docket sheet outside of our court room shortly after we had arrived. The original cases scheduled for the day were indicated by numbers. There were also several cases shoehorned in front of ours, indicated by letters. The lettered cases seemed to be pending cases left over from before Dashain, the biggest festival in Nepal. Even though our case was the fourth of the day, I soon learned our case would not be argued until 3pm or 3:30pm at the earliest.
So began our first round of tea. Keshab Prasad Mainali, a former chief judge of the various Courts of Appeal and current head of our Litigation Practice Group, grabbed me by the arm as we were about to enter the café and said, “you are about enter our cafeteria,” meaning the lawyers’ café and hangout. It was indeed filled with attorneys. Everyone seemed happy to welcome us and everyone else who walked in and my colleagues, by turn, returned this favor to new entrants as well. We drank tea and ate some chickpea salad and yoghurt. Later we retired downstairs to the courtyard to shoot the breeze and wait some more.
We later went up to the courtroom again to check on the progress of the cases before ours. There was none. As Gandhi and I decided to go back to get some work done at the office during the downtime, we met our client outside of the courtroom. He was very happy to see us. And so began our second, third, and fourth rounds of tea.
I had a chance to chat with our client and met many more attorneys. Our client is an investor, has some relatives in the U.S., and sometimes he visits them in California during Christmas time. One of the more outspoken attorneys seemed very interested to hear what I had to say about current India-Nepal relations, but thankfully Gandhi helped me avoid any potential political faux pas by saying I only give my opinions if I am first paid a fee. I did not argue the point. I later learned that this attorney and another that seemed equally jovial with Gandhi each represented clients who had interests in our case.
We were back in the courtroom when the case before ours began. One of my other colleagues entered our firm’s appearance on behalf of our client. After the previous case came to an end, there was a lengthy discussion over whether there would be enough time to argue our case. It was decided that the case should begin. But after the claims were read before the court and some preliminary matters were addressed, the justices decided to adjourn for the day instead. It became clear that the case was too complex and there were too many interests at stake for so late in the day.
Gandhi explained to me that this is how appellate litigation goes (or does not) in Nepal. Sometimes there is a lot of waiting. Next time I will bring my briefcase.
