That deputy constable, David Woodruff, quickly learned tCR>he error of his ways. A woman in American Airlines' legal department called him a few days later with the bad news. She told Woodruff that she'd call Jones' office to alert them to the mistake. Just to make sure, Woodruff called the court, too.
Jones' court has no record of either call. Nothing was done to correct the problem.
A few weeks later, on September 23, Jones held the trial as planned. No one named Holland--Kerry or Cary--showed up. Jones ruled against Holland and in favor of Thomas.
Six months later, with no payment from Holland in sight, Judge Jones sent Deputy Constable Woodruff a writ of execution--in other words, an order to go get the $5,000 or, if Holland didn't have the money, to haul off $5,000 worth of Holland's possessions.
Woodruff, of course, was confused.
"Officer Woodruff of Tarrant County called re: writ of execution he has to file," a May 2, 1995 notation in the court file states. "Not sure which Holland to serve at American Airlines."
Again, Woodruff explained the screwup with the two Hollands. This time, he also faxed a written summary of events to the court. The court spent the next month corresponding with the county clerk's office to expunge the judgment against Cary Holland--which was improper because Cary had never been served notice of his trial.
Then the court started all over again from scratch.
On May 10, Deputy Constable Woodruff received his third citation for Cary Holland. But by this time--almost a year after Thomas filed her lawsuit--Holland had left American Airlines, and with the element of surprise long gone, Holland avoided civil process at his Fort Worth home.
Eight months passed with no activity in the case. Finally, the second trial was set for January 16. Thomas showed up. We jurors showed up. Even Holland showed up. Holland's lawyer didn't.
When I later called Holland's lawyer, Roger Turner, he declined to discuss the case. "I wouldn't want to talk to the press about this," he said. "I have no authority from my client to do that." I'd be happy to talk to his client, I explained, but he'd left American Airlines, and his home number was not listed. Would Turner contact him for me? "No, I won't."
Sitting in her Duncanville home last weekend, Dorothy Thomas was bewildered by it all. She had not gotten her trial; she had no date for another trial; and now, according to what I had seen in her court file that day, Judge Jones considered the case over. "Plaintiff and defendant agreed to settle out of court and will submit agreement to court through defendant's attorney," Gloria McMahon wrote in the file jacket that day.
That's news to Thomas. "Cary asked me in court that day if I would consider settling the case, and I said I'd listen to what he had to say," Thomas said. "He said he'd have his lawyer call me, but it's been almost a week, and I haven't heard anything. Knowing how Cary's done me in the past, he probably thinks this is going to go away.
"I feel like I'm back where I started," she added. "I am so disgusted about all of this. I was just telling my son that I need to call the court on Monday and say, 'Where does this go?' because they really didn't explain anything to me--what my rights were or what I was waiving by agreeing to talk to the lawyer."
Welcome to justice, J.P. Jones-style, Ms. Thomas.
Two days after my cameo in Jones' court, I went back to the central jury room. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that none of this was a coincidence. Surely, the jury-room clerks had put me in Jones' court as a joke. Right?
"It was really just luck of the draw," jury clerk Faye Henderson told me. "We look at people's zip codes when we look for people to send out to the J.P. courts, and you had an Oak Cliff zip code. So you were sent out there."
Still, Henderson and I figured the odds of my getting assigned to Jones were pretty small. The county had mailed 1,900 summonses for jury duty that day. Of that number, 415 people showed up to serve (the rest either had bad addresses, or weren't citizens, or had felony records, or simply took an exemption or a powder.)
Of the 415 of us who showed, 60 of us went to justice-of-the-peace courts out in the hinterlands, 36 of us to three Oak Cliff courts. Of those three courts, Jones' was the least likely to get me because it was the farthest from my home.
It was an insanely busy day for the jury clerks. In fact, they ran out of jurors by 11 a.m. and had to start calling in standbys.
And while those standbys were getting those calls, I was sitting out in South Oak Cliff in a court that didn't need me with a judge who pretty much screws up everything he touches.
All because of the magic of zip codes. "See, nobody was picking on you," Henderson told me.
She was right. But somebody up there sure was picking on Thomas Jones.
