Welch's Significant Cases- How Does She Do It?

The comment originates with Wayne Turner, whose firm Hoover, Hull, Turner, LLP regularly finds itself in Judge Heather Welch's court. In a December 2017 review of the then pilot project for Commercial Courts, Turner offered the following suggestion:

Help the higher volume Commercial Courts to clear their dockets of matters from non-Commercial Court cases; I don't know how Judge Welch keeps up, but she does it somehow.

That's not even considering her numerous ongoing obligations and contributions to the broader legal profession detailed in this post Welch's Amazing Professional Contributions.

Let's see if maybe we can solve Mr. Turner's mystery for him.

Worse Than Regulatory Capture

In the realm of regulation and protecting the public interest, how could anything be worse than regulatory capture, right?

Excuse the crass word, but what if there was regulatory incest? Extend the proverbial fox hen house to having foxes protecting the hen house and judging claims of harm by hens against foxes. What I am suggesting isn’t an otherwise neutral third party that starts taking bribes, as if a cow favored foxes for some side benefit. 

Welch's Amazing Professional Contributions

We previously detailed Judge Welch's amazingly busy courtroom that for some odd reason gets a large percentage of the most notable cases in Indiana courts. Yet with all that, Judge Heather Welch still finds a few minutes to give back to the profession:

How to Escape Judge Welch's Commercial Court

For Attorneys

Alright Indiana Jones / Batman and Robin / Bo and Luke, you have found yourself in Judge Welch's Commercial Court. That might be because:

• You contractually agreed, even if you didn't realize it, 
• The opposing party is falsely stating that you did sign a contract that never existed and Welch won't make them produce it with new trial court rules, 

Or maybe the opposing party isn't doing any of that since recent trial rule amendments give no greater weight to one venue provision over another, sort of, and subject to the judge's personal preference.

Most importantly, when a party 'familiar' to Judge Welch lands in her court, she has a history of ruling in their favor to keep the case by denying any motion to transfer or claim of improper venue.

So what's the key to escaping Welch's Commercial Court labyrinth? 

Must vs. Shall

Once again, I am not a lawyer either by education or training. Nor do I play one on TV (sorry we have been watching "Friends" reruns). However, I have attempted to defend myself in the lawsuit that motivated the creation of this blog, but that's all.

I recently happened on an interesting amendment to Indiana Trial Rule 9.2 changing "must" to "shall":