Yelled at by the judge!

There's a judge here in the district court who is known to be moody, but very liberal with defendants. For the most part, he limits his outbursts to the scolding and general education of the stammering newbie ADAs that churn through the revolving door of our local DA's office like so many salmon swimming upstream. But occasionally he barks at a defense attorney and this week it was me. I was in the trial session and the judge held my trial over until 10:30 to see if the court could get through a couple of short bench trials before empaneling a jury. At 10:30 I look into the courtroom and one of the bench trials is still going on. I didn't go into the courtroom and interrupt, of course, but when I came back a moment later (and by came back, I mean walked back ten feet from the defense bar office) the judge had already begun empaneling for another trial. I asked another attorney if my case had been called and she said no. Nonetheless, after empaneling, the judge sees me and immediately begins dressing me down and when I said that I had been present in the courtroom at 10:30, he then excoriated me for -- get this -- not interrupting the court to alert them to my presence. So, the moral of the story is that you are to patiently wait for the clerk to call your case, unless you are not supposed to do that and are instead supposed to dance a jig to get the court's attention. I suppose it's better than being yelled at because you are doing a poor job representing your client, but I actually work very hard to not be that lawyer - the one the court is always looking for and whose clients are always asking other defense attorneys for advice because their attorney is late. At the end of the day, I was able to comfort myself with the fact that the judge handed out at least two NGs and I think mine would have been a third if it had been reached.