Judicial Profile

Specific Comments or Advice for Litigants

Specific Requirements or Preferences

My Judicial Assistant is reachable via (602) 372-0935 and via email at CVJ19@JBAZMC.maricopa.gov.  
 
The Court expects lawyers and all parties to treat each other, opposing parties, court staff, and everyone with respect and professionalism.  
 
Harassment, bias, or prejudice on the basis of race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, marital status, socioeconomic status, or affiliation is strictly prohibited.  
 
This division may hold virtual proceedings on Court Connect at times. The links you receive from my staff, from the automated court calendar notification, from scheduling orders, or from minute entries all lead to my virtual courtroom. Once you click a link to join, please assume you are in the courtroom and on-the-record, so please conduct yourself as if in court and advise others that you may have asked to attend to do the same.  
 
Please plan to submit necessary documents in accordance with the Court's orders and all documents to be filed or exhibits to be uploaded will not be considered if they fail to comply with this protocol or with the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure and the Local Rules (Maricopa County) of the Superior Court.  

Pre-Trial Practice and Management Issues

Motion Practice

This division handles most motions via eFile; please lodge a Word format electronic form of order. Please do not include the word "Proposed" or "[Proposed]" on Word format forms of order; omitting it makes e-filing more efficient for the Division  
 
INSTRUCTIONS FOR BOOKMARKING AND FILING MOTIONS WITH MULTIPLE EXHIBITS  
 
All e-filed pleadings, including, but not limited to, summary judgment pleadings, that contain more than 5 exhibits shall contain bookmarks to all exhibits attached to your pleading(s). All bookmarks must be contained in your e-filed pleading in pdf format. The bookmarking to exhibits is crucial, so that the Court can readily locate an exhibit without undue delay. The Court does not want hard copies of the exhibits, and the Court does not want the materials on thumb drive or email. DO NOT bookmark case citations. Any hyperlinks to any websites or the internet (e.g., Westlaw) will not work. Failure to provide the bookmarks as required above will result in the issuance of a Minute Entry rejecting the pleading. The party will be required to efile a new pleading with proper bookmarking no later than 14 days after the filing of the Minute Entry rejecting the original pleading. The Court reserves the right to disallow any pleadings that are not re-efiled within 5 days.  
 
To ensure bookmarked motions are filed in an acceptable format, please file your document using the following instructions:  
 
(1) Your primary motion or fact statement and all of your cited exhibits must be filed as a single PDF, with slip sheets separating and identifying each exhibit.  
 
(2) Each Exhibit in your PDF should be bookmarked. Your exhibit bookmarks should be named by Exhibit number/letter and a short description of what it is. For example, “Exhibit A – Cited Excerpts from Plaintiff’s Deposition.”  
 
(3) You should not upload your exhibits as “supporting” documents to your motion or fact statement when filing in Turbo Court as any bookmarks will not be usable if the exhibits are separated from the main document.  
 
(4) A single PDF may be e-filed in Turbo Court with a file size of up to 9.5 MB. To accommodate these file size limitations, this Court encourages parties to submit only cited excerpts from lengthy depositions, contracts, or other documents and to submit a condensed copy of any cited transcript. No word indexes or unnecessary documents or pages should be included.  
 
(5) If the size of your motions and exhibits still exceeds 9.5 MB, you can compress the file size by using compression software. (See Compress PDFs & reduce file size online for free | Adobe Acrobat)  
 
(6) If after these measures, your file still exceeds 9.5 MB, you may file your exhibits separately as a “supporting document,” but then all of your exhibits should be combined into a single PDF and should be separated with slip sheets identifying each exhibit and the Exhibit PDF should be internally bookmarked. TurboCourt accepts file sizes of up to 100 MB total for both the main and supporting documents filed together.  
 
(7) Please note that hyperlinks and bookmarks to websites or to separate documents will not work once your document is e-filed in TurboCourt. Only internal hyperlinks and bookmarks to pages within the single PDF e-filed with the Court will remain usable after e-filing.  
 
Please only include cited excerpts from lengthy documents (i.e., deposition transcripts). This Court prefers condensed transcripts to be attached to motions or fact statements rather than the full-size transcripts.  
 
If agreement on a brief extension of a response or reply deadline is reached, please file a Rule 7.1(g) notice. The notice is sufficient and should indicate the agreed on extension deadline. No proposed order is required. This will ensure Court staff is aware to allow additional time for briefing and does not inadvertently sent the motion to the judge to rule on a motion, believing it to be unopposed.  
 
No party should include more that one motion in a single filing or combine a response and a motion or a reply and a motion in one filing. This applies to requests for attorneys' fees or sanctions. Such requests should be made by separate motion.  
 
No party should file supplemental briefing without leave of Court.  
All citations shall be included in the body of the brief and not in footnotes.  
 
Page limits should not be exceeded without leave of court.  
 
The Court permits only one Motion for Summary Judgment per party absent leave of Court for good cause shown.  
 
Motions in Limine should not be filed in bench trials without leave of Court.  
 
Absent leave of Court for good cause shown, each party may file no more than five Motions in Limine. Motions in Limine should address only matters that are extremely prejudicial and could result in a mistrial. Motions in Limine should not be filed on routine evidentiary matters. Motions in Limine asking the Court to enforce a particular rule of evidence should not be filed. Motions in Limine are to be no more than four pages in length and responses are no more than four pages in length. There are no replies.  
 
Oral argument should not be a regurgitation of matters in the briefs. The Court will likely have questions at oral argument.

Discovery or Disclosure Disputes and/or Sanctions

This Division requires strict compliance with Ariz. R. Civ. P. 26(d), the Expedited Procedure for Resolving Discovery and Disclosure Disputes. All disputes between parties that could be addressed in motions for protective order under Rule 26(c) or motions to compel discovery or disclosure under Rule 37(a) must first proceed pursuant to Rule 26(d). The Court may decide to later permit full briefing under Ariz. R. Civ. P. 26(d)(1), but the parties may not engage in full briefing without the advance permission of the Court. Attempted full briefing without advance permission of the Court subjects any such motion by a party to summary denial.

Other Pre-trial Practice Guidelines or Comments

When calling a witness to testify virtually during a trial or hearing, please ensure you or your co-counsel are in communication with the witness so they are aware of when to connect to the virtual proceeding. Trial time is limited and precious.  
 
Counsel or parties calling witnesses to testify remotely are responsible for ensuring the witness has the ability to appear with a working web camera and microphone from a quiet location with a device and a sufficient highspeed internet connection so that the witness can be seen and heard clearly while testifying remotely. Counsel and parties can make an appointment to test the connection with their witness by calling or emailing division prior to the hearing or trial.  
 
When the Rule of Exclusion, Ariz. R. Evid. 615, has been invoked, all counsel should inform their party’s witnesses of its invocation and meaning, and all counsel and parties should be vigilant to assist the Court in ensuring that no witnesses enter the courtroom, or dial-in or link-in to the courtroom telephonically or otherwise, while other witnesses are testifying, which would be in violation of the rule.

Trial Practice and Protocol

Trial Schedule

Hearings and Trials run from 9:30 a.m. to noon and/or 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. There will be a mid-morning break and a mid-afternoon break each day so that the parties can expect to be allocated five hours of trial time per day of trial.

Joint Pre-Trial Memo and/or Conference; Exhibits and Objections

See discussion on motion practice for Motions in Limine.  
 
Except for self-represented litigants, all exhibits must be marked electronically through Case Center. Consult your trial setting minute entry for detailed instructions on marking exhibits on Case Center and ensure you email the clerk in advance of the trial to obtain an official list of the exhibits as numbered by the clerk. Case Center does not consecutively mark exhibits, but instead numbers them as Plaintiff's 1 and Defendant's 1. Please try to remove all duplicate exhibits. Stipulated exhibits are generally admitted at the pre-trial management conference. If there are major issues about an exhibit, please be prepared to address them at the pre-trial management conference. Please have a copy of the exhibit in question for the Court. With large documents, please consider only having the operative language admitted. If there is a 100 page contract with only one sentence in dispute, there generally is no need to admit the entire document. Please seriously consider what documents are necessary for your case. The court does not look favorably on having dozens of exhibits presented "just in case" they are necessary.  
 
Exhibits can and should be presented "on the screen," though you may bring your own device and need not use Case Center for presentation purposes. You may use TrialPad or Trial Director or present PDFs if that is your preferred method so long as the display reflects the identical document as marked in Case Center. You may also use hard copies with the Elmo, but the clerk does not provide hard copies for you so ensure you have brought all the exhibits you wish to use as hard copies with you to trial if you wish to use the elmo instead of plugging your device into the court's system.  
 
Note that you can and should make an appointment with court staff before trial to test your equipment and familiarize yourself with the courtroom technology to ensure your presentation runs smoothly during trial and so that we can help troubleshoot any technical issues in advance.

Jury Selection

We use the struck method where the entire panel is questioned and this Court will utilize the remote juror questionnaire in advance of the trial to gather information from the jury panel for purposes of identifying hardships and potential biases. The Court will provide counsel and the parties with a draft of the electronic questionnaire for comment at least two weeks prior to trial and will include a deadline for responses and requested changes. The Court will consider all comments and requests and will edit the questionnaire as appropriate. The questionnaire will be circulated to the jury panel the week prior to trial and responses will be uploaded and shared with counsel and the parties the Thursday afternoon prior to trial. The Court will hold a status conference once responses are uploaded and will review those responses with counsel/the parties to determine whether any panel members should be released for hardship based upon their responses. The Court will always allow counsel/parties to follow up with jurors in person if they request to, but expects the parties/counsel to be reasonable in releasing those jurors whose responses indicate it would be a serious hardship for them to serve (such as physical illness).  
 
Once reporting jurors arrive on the first day of trial, the remaining panel will be brought into the Courtroom and jury selection will be completed in person. After the Court concludes its verbal examination of the jury panel, Counsel will be provided a short period of time to ask follow up questions. This generally should not exceed 15 to 30 minutes. We generally will seat 9 jurors and counsel are asked to seriously consider having the alternate deliberate with seven of nine for a verdict.

Trial Practice and Procedure

Ensure all disclosure statements are accessible as the Court will need you to identify where a document or witness's testimony was timely disclosed in the event of a disclosure objection.  
 
Objections should be short and succinct. If the Court wants a response or further discussion, the Court will ask for it. We have electronic equipment in the courtroom, which counsel are free to use. Please make an appointment before trial with court staff to talk about how to use the equipment.  
 
You may ask for a bench conference if necessary to avoid a discussion not appropriate to be heard by the jury. However, these requests should be kept to a minimum and only as needed to address an issue that counsel is concerned may cause a mistrial if not addressed immediately.

Courtroom Etiquette

Please be courteous to my staff. Remember that they can be helpful to you. But, please do not ask them for legal advice. They are not lawyers and they cannot answer those questions.  
 
Please do not argue with the other party. Your comments should always be directed to the Court and not to one another while court is in session.  
 
You may stand or sit at counsel table or use the podium, as you prefer. You do not have to ask permission to approach the witness, but you may not question the witness while standing next to the witness or directly in front of the witness stand without permission.  
 
Please remind those people who come with you to court that they are also expected to be courteous and abide by Courtroom procedures.

Other Courtroom Policies and Recommendations

EXPECTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN COURT FILINGS  
 
The Court is aware that some parties and attorneys use artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools (such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or similar programs) to help prepare pleadings, motions, or other filings. While these tools may assist in drafting or explaining legal concepts, all parties remain fully responsible for the accuracy and truthfulness of their filings.  
 
AI tools sometimes generate incorrect or “hallucinated” case citations, statutes, or facts that appear genuine but are not. While these citations look real, they are not. Submitting inaccurate or fabricated material may result in denial of relief, sanctions, or other consequences.  
To reduce errors (and minimize the risk of sanctions), the Court expects filers using AI to:  
 
1. Independently and carefully verify every citation and legal authority using official or reliable legal sources. Again, the party or attorney using AI is responsible for false citations.  
2. Confirm all facts are true and supported by evidence in the record.  
3. Remember that AI tools are not lawyers and cannot give legal advice.  
 
The Court supports responsible use of technology, but every filer is accountable for ensuring the accuracy of what is filed. A party who is irresponsible with the use of these tools, or (worse) knowingly submits pleadings with non-existent facts/caselaw, will be subject to sanctions.  
 
Please also do not use Court Connect or any other electronic platform to 'chat' Judge Julian, whether we are on the record or off the record at the time.  
 
If you need to communicate with the Division, please contact staff at the email addresses listed above. Exigencies during an on-the-record proceeding might also be handled by 'chatting' staff only if they are available in Court Connect for that function. Please ensure that your chat message only goes to the Division staff member you intended and not to all in a proceeding.  
 
In any event, DO NOT use Court Connect or any other text or electronic platform to chat or message a witness while they are testifying or to side-chat any party in a virtual proceeding. Chat-logs are public and permanent, and virtual court proceedings operate with the same formality and prohibitions as in-person proceedings. Please advise clients and witnesses of the same.