Snowflake Justice Court

No, not a dispute resolution center for campus microaggressions. It's actually an Arizona trial court for dealing with misdemeanors, unlawful detainer lawsuits, protection orders, and small claims in the town of Snowflake (population 6,500).

Comments

[Dr. Ed 2]

Founded by Mr. Snow and Mr. Flake.

On a more serious note, a town of 6,500 has enough business to support a municipal court? Full time?

[David Nieporent]

On a more serious note, a town of 6,500 has enough business to support a municipal court? Full time?

Probably not, no.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Apparently it is full time.
https://www.navajocountyaz.gov/256/Snowflake

[santamonica811]

1. Well, the court does also serve 2 or 3 other towns. I guess collectively . . . ?
2. I see that the Snowflake High School mascot is the Lobo(s). We gotta be able to come up with better school nicknames.
a. The Snowflake Flakes. (Okay, too on-the-nose)
b. The Snowflake Frostbites
c. The Snowflake I-Just-Caught-One-On-My-Tongue's.
d. The Snowflake Snowcones. (or Snowflake Slushies)
e. The Snowflake Blizzard (again, too on-the-nose?)
f. The Snowflake Humorless
g. The Snowflake Overly Dramatics (Glee Club and Drama club only)
h. The Snowflake Histrionics
i. The Snowflake Vapors (Emblem would be a strand of clutched pearls)

[Dr. Ed 2]

Much to my surprise, it apparently does snow in Arizona, and as Snowflake is at 5,584 feet, it might be high enough to get snow.

Now where they got the water for the paper mill they used to have -- that's another story as paper mills require quite a bit of water.

[Commenter_XY]

sm811, I commend your creativity. Perhaps something simpler.

The Snow Flakes
(red hats adorned with emblem of solitary snowflake on the front)

Maybe parsimony is the answer here.

PS: Hope the quakes did not damage anything

[David Nieporent]

All that means that the clerk's office is open full time, not that the court is in session full time.

[Frank Drackman]

Forget it Jake, it's Snowflake

[santamonica811]

A Snowflake smalls claims case has a max award of $2,500. Vastly different from here in California, where the max is $12.5K (or 6.25K, if the plaintiff is non-natural, like a corporation, partnership, etc).* I have no idea what the max is for all the other various states. Any comprehensive lists available online?

*Interestingly; here in Calif, there is no max if you are suing for owed rent that was unpaid due to Covid. I think there's another 12 months or so left in this Covid exception. I've never had a chance to sit as a judge on one of these Covid cases, which I admit has been a bit of a disappointment.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I saw "civil matters of $10,000 or less" in the above URL.

Massachusetts says "A small claim against a landlord over an apartment rental may also be brought where the apartment is located" although I've never seen a landlord bring an unpaid rent suit against a tenant in small claims court.

$7,000 limit, see https://www.mass.gov/small-claims

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but I doubt the landlords will ever see much of that money. It was spent...

[Merlin's Beard]

A fair amount of my practice in Iowa is exactly that, where the jurisdictional limit of the small claims court is $6,500.00. The statute of limitations on the enforcement of judgments here is 20 years from the date of entry of the judgment, so you do have a long time to collect from the former tenant once you get judgment.

[Dr. Ed 2]

But doesn't the judgement come off the credit rating after 3 years?
And even with a 20 year judgment, you have to have something to attach to satisfy the judgment and above whatever the Iowa limitations on attachment/garnishment are. So if the person is working under the table and renting in someone else's name, your judgment's not enforceable.

And I assume you are an attorney -- small claims court was supposed to be pro se. Now I have seen *attorneys* suing tenants in District Court, but they usually are also trying to get an order of eviction and I am not sure if small claims court can issue that.

Of course Massachusetts is probably the most tenant-friendly state so YMMV.

[Merlin's Beard]

I believe it stays on for 7 years, to the extent that it's on there at all. I know Experian stopped including judgments on credit reports a few years ago.

You're absolutely right about judgments often being challenging to collect on. If it were easy, everyone would do it. My primary area of practice is debt collection. The majority of my cases are in small claims court. It's true that small claims courts may have originally been intended to be for the use of pro se litigants. But in reality, they're debt collection courts, mostly used by a handful of attorneys on behalf of their clients.

Re: eviction, here the small claims court is a division of the district court, and has jurisdiction both over claims $6500 and below and evictions.

[John F. Carr]

It's scary to see protection orders in the list of services provided by a municipal small claims court.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Why? From my experience, assigning protective orders to the equivalent court is very common, if not ubiquitous.

[Dr. Ed 2]

And this judge is more qualified than many Massachusetts District Court Judges.

[Martinned2]

I've never been to Arizona, but based on my understanding of its climate I think there should be some kind of law against naming an Arizona town "Snowflake", or anything else referencing snow, ice, or winter.

[Estragon]

Your understanding is mistaken…. Plenty of very tall mountains in Arizona that get snow in the winter, particularly north of Flagstaff.

[Old Smokin' Egg]

It regularly snows on the Santa Catalina mountains, just outside Tucson; there's even a ski area atop Mt. Lemmon (ca. 8000 ft). After the first major snowfall of the winter, lots of people drive up the Mt. Lemmon Highway, fill the backs of their pickups with snow, and drive back to town to build snowmen (sorry, should that be "persons of snowness"?) on their lawns.

And it even snows in central Tucson: I'd guess, once every two or three years. Usually, it's just a few flakes that immediately melt, but very occasionally it's an inch or more, and sticks all morning. Which basically paralyzes the city...

[Dr. Ed 2]

An inch of snow can be worse than a foot if the road is below freezing and you don't salt it. Remember how ice skates work -- the weight of the skater causes the ice to melt.

What happens is that a little bit of snow melts under the tires of each car, and then refreeezes once the weight of the car is removed. If there is only a little bit of snow there in the first place, and the road hasn't been salted, it refreezes into Black Ice, which is truly treacherous. And unless your vehicles are running studded snow tires (or chains), there is nothing they can do on Black Ice.

I once saw snow flurries shut down all of Suburban Boston (Inside I-495) because MassDOT hadn't salted it in time and then couldn't get the trucks out because of the traffic.

[SRG2]

"New Civil Engineer" once had a story about a potential code violation in an Arizona building where the issue was that the roof would give way under 3" of snow in temperatures in excess of 102F (or something similar).

[Dr. Ed 2]

3″ of wet snow weighs a lot more than you might think, throw in poor drainage and rain on top of it (which snow absorbs like a sponge), and you well could have a roof collapse.

It also takes a lot of energy to melt snow -- over three times what it takes to bring liquid water from 32 to 212.

Memory is that an inch of wet snow on a car increases its weight by a ton.

Back in 2015, Mass Emergency Management sent out a warning about flat roofs and a lot of people were up on them with snowblowers so this didn’t happen.

[David Nieporent]

1) 3" of wet snow weighs exactly as much as I might think.

2) It does not in fact take three times as much energy to melt snow as to boil water.

3) In inch of wet snow on a car does not in fact increase its weight by a ton. You are off by like an order of magnitude.

Have you ever actually shoveled snow in your life?

[Artifex]

2) It does not in fact take three times as much energy to melt snow as to boil water.

That's not what he said. Your reading is about as accurate as Ed's physics.

Energy to melt 1g of ice: 334 Joules.
Energy to raise the temperature of 1g of water from 32 to 212 (assuming units are F): 418.6 Joules

[Noscitur a sociis]

That’s not what he said.

Apologies if I’m missing something obvious, but what other interpretation of Dr Ed’s claim is there?

[Artifex]

Raising the temperature of water from 32 F to 212 F is different than boiling it. Actually boiling it and converting to steam uses an additional 2,260 Joules.

I was simply amused at both how wrong Dr Ed is and how quickly the precision disappears when our local pedant finds the need to smear someone.

[Voize]

If someone asked you to boil a pot of water would you really think they wanted you to boil it until the pot was dry?

[Artifex]

Sort of depends on the topic of conversation does it not ? If the topic of the discussion is energy budget, the state changes are pretty damned important. The terminology matters to ensure that we can actually communicate effectively. If you look at the numbers, you will notice it actually matters a great deal.

I note that this is the same pedant that when something is described colloquially as "criminal", loves to say things like: "That is civil not criminal". Does this exactness really matter to most arguments ? To pedant lawyers spewing a narrative, obviously it does. Does "boiling" vs energy input over a range of temperature matter ? If you are actually calculating energy it does, if you are pushing a narrative to insult someone, obviously it does not.

[David Nieporent]

You have decided to interpret my words uncharitably. Using the phrase “boil water” was shorter than typing “raise the temperature of water from 32 to 212,” and was an easily understood reference to what Dr. Ed had said. What makes your semantic quibble even more quibbly is that my statement was accurate whether interpreted as a summary of what Dr. Ed had said or as you have decided to interpret it; it does indeed not take three times as much energy to melt ice as to do either.

[Mr. Bumble]

3″ of wet snow weighs on average 5.23 pounds per square foot.

https://roofonline.com/weight-of-snow/

[Mr. Bumble]

Don't feel bad Martin, you are part of a large group whose "understanding" of climate is misinformed.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Yes -- and see this: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-sun-is-stranger-than-astrophysicists-imagined?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

This is heat that the Earth receives...

[Noscitur a sociis]

As Dr. Ed noted above (not words I ever expected to write!), the town is named after its nineteenth century founders, Erastus Snow and William Flake.

[Sarcastr0]

IIRC former Senator Jeff Flake is a Flake scion.

I was interning on the Hill when he was there; he was in the minority, but was always the guy in the committees who seemed to be having fun.

[David Nieporent]

I'm not denying that it's true, but it really sounds like a town legend. What are the odds that two people with those names would get together to found a town?

[SRG2]

They might have been aware of each other and decided to found a town for that reason! Note the famous paper written by Ralph Alpher, Hans Bethe and George Gamow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpher%E2%80%93Bethe%E2%80%93Gamow_paper

[Noscitur a sociis]

Actually on further research I am starting to question this. William Flake was definitely a Founder, and Erastus Snow was an important Mormon leader at that time, but this does seem more like something people cooked up later.

[Azinpa]

Thanks for the shout out for my court. Yes, the town named in the 19th century certainly has a negative connotation today. The most well known person from Snowflake is probably former Senator and Ambassador Jeff Flake. It does snow. Arizona is not all desert. The town name is from the founders and not for the winter climate. My precinct covers 4 small communities in central Navajo County with about 25k residents within the boundaries. You don’t have to be a lawyer in AZ to be a justice of the peace (limited jurisdiction courts).