J-Law 48 — Proposed Orders Three Days Before Hearing

Any proposed order shall be issued to all parties at least 3 days before the hearing at which it may be entered.

An order seen for the first time as it is being entered cannot be meaningfully opposed. The party is handed a document, in open court, drafted by the other side, and asked for objections on the spot — objections to language that took days to craft, evaluated in seconds, under the eyes of a judge ready to sign. The ambush is a tactic, and it works: problematic provisions slide through because no one had time to find them.

Notice and the opportunity to be heard are the twin pillars of due process, and both collapse when the document at issue arrives simultaneously with its entry. Three days is a modest interval — enough to read carefully, research consequences, and prepare specific objections; short enough to delay nothing that deserves speed. Parties confident in their proposed orders lose nothing by advance disclosure.

The expected counterargument: hearings sometimes produce unanticipated rulings that need immediate orders, and a three-day rule delays justice. Emergencies are the rare case, and rules accommodate rare cases through narrow exceptions rather than by abandoning the protection for everything else; genuine urgency can be handled with an interim minute entry while the formal order circulates for the required period. The routine case — the overwhelming majority — involves an order one side drafted well in advance and chose to spring at the hearing, and springing is the practice being abolished. Three days delays entry, never decision: the ruling is made, the parties know it, and the only thing waiting is the precise language that will bind everyone for years. Language that cannot survive three days of the other side reading it was never accurate language, which is precisely the point.