Apparently everything in the state of Georgia must grind to a halt around New Years Day when the Bulldogs face Oklahoma in the 104th Rose Bowl game.
J. Patrick Connell, a lawyer from Savannah, Ga., got tickets and airfare to see the Rose Bowl with his older brother, Matt, just before Christmas and wrote the motion of his life to ask Chatham County Superior Court Chief Judge Michael L. Karpf to move the trial date for a civil suit.
“If the undersigned attends the game,” Connell wrote in an emergency motion, “he will need to travel home from California on January 2, 2018, and he will therefore be unable to appear at the bench trial as currently scheduled.”
Connell presented a spirited argument for the court.
“The 2018 Rose Bowl will be a momentous occasion for the Dawgs,” he wrote. “This will be just the second time the Dawgs have appeared in the Rose Bowl, their first appearance having occurred some 75 years ago, in 1943, in the midst of World War II, when the Dawgs defeated the Bruins of UCLA, 9-0.”
If Connell were to attend, he’d see Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm (“my God, a freshman,” Connell noted) and Bulldogs Coach Kirby Smart, who have “led Georgia to a 12-1 record (so far) and its first SEC Championship since 2005.”
Smart, Connell observes, “by all appearances, quickly built a juggernaut that will contend for championships for years to come.”
Connell will not require any further continuances because he does not have any court appearances scheduled for January 8, 2018, the date of the College Football Championship, he told The Post in a phone interview.
“I’ll just be conspicuously absent from the office that day,” he said.
Chief Judge Karpf, an admitted Dawgs fan himself, responded in his order, “Plaintiff’s counsel has made it clear to this Court that victory for the Bulldogs hinges on nothing less than the very attendance of the Plaintiff’s counsel, himself, at the Rose Bowl.”
Karpf “reluctantly” granted Connell’s motion and rescheduled the trial date for Jan. 25, 2018, on one solemn condition:
“In the unfortunate happenstance that the University of Georgia does not emerge triumphant from the Rose Bowl on January 1st, Plaintiff’s counsel must appear before this Court at 9:00 a.m. on January 3rd and show cause as to why he should not be held in contempt for failing to secure a Bulldog victory.”
The motion and corresponding order are both worth reading in their entirety. Check them out here:
