The Ada files: a legal star was born
In Magistrate Kyle Schou's court, a simple and boring hearing turned into a great display of lawyering.
Note: Despite Monday’s pronouncement that any hearing involving minors were closed to the public in Idaho, I was allowed into multiple hearings involving minors.
Inside courtroom 405- where Magistrate Kyle Schou presides- a boring sounding hearing was held in the child custody case between Mitchell Wood and Kelly O’Toole.
Instead, a master class on lawyering was given by Idaho attorney Ron Brilliant.
The hearing was a pre-trial conference with several motions.
The backdrop to this hearing was alleged domestic violence and an incident from November 2024.
On a cold fall evening, the father, Mitchell Wood, threw his three children out of his home, according to evidence presented by Brilliant in the hearing.
The children. very logically, refused to go back. Only, the two parents had joint custody, with 50/50 custody time.
For months, the children refused and for months Mitchell was racking up custody time which was not executed.
Magistrate Schou, a former public defender and protege of Magistrate Diane Walker, was not all that worried about the November incident.
He issued an order instead barring Kelly from any contact with her children on March 12, 2025.
Kelly had no contact with them for approximately four weeks before being upgraded to supervised visits.
Remarkably, she had filed for a modification of custody in May 2024. That modification had still not been heard.
No one could explain why, though she had a different attorney then.
There were a couple items related to the trial on the modification which were to be heard on Wednesday May 21, 2025.
Instead, Mr. Brilliant pulled some legal razzle dazzle.
Brilliant withdrew the motion to modify- arguing that the reasoning for the modification no longer applied.
He further argued that since Mr. Wood had received the custody time he lost back and then some it was akin “time served.”
This criminal standard probably made sense to the former public defender, Magistrate Kyle Schou.
The move stunned the courtroom. Mitchell Wood’s attorney, Phillip Bevis, was prepared to argue against the appointment of a parenting time evaluator (PTE)
A PTE is called a custody evaluator in most states.
Mr. Bevis made an effective argument against the PTE, in my opinion, but he wasn’t ready for an entirely new argument.
Neither was Magistrate Schou, who asked the parties to confer outside the courtroom.
The hearing took a ten-minute break.
When they returned, the parties said they were not in agreement.
Mr. Bevis immediately argued for attorney’s fees. He argued that pulling the modification motion at the eleventh hour unfairly burdened him.
Mr. Brilliant argued that the motion was meritorious, but it no longer applied.
The money was the appetizer.
What was Magistrate Schou to do? Based on his prior rulings, he, like his mentor, favors abusers.
In this case, Mr. Wood is the abuser.
The parties traded case law, statutes, and other legal jargon back and forth- nerdy legal talk.
Magistrate Schou was boxed in. This order was temporary, implemented to give back custody time which was lost.
The case was in chaos- that’s why a modification to modify motion still hadn’t been heard for over a year.
No one noticed the simple legal maneuver except the legal star in this room: Ron Brilliant.
Magistrate Schou announced that everything would go back to before AFTER HE WROTE THE ORDER.
It was the most he could do to continue keeping Kelly away from her children.
Except, I was in the room, and he promised to write this order, so he better follow through.
Mr. Brilliant also asked for parenting coordinator. Though he was the legal star, he also seems to like to get people appointed, something I disagree with.
