Announcement Regarding the Multnomah County Circuit Court Call Docket
If you have trials or hearings assigned off the Multnomah County Circuit Court call docket and would like to avoid sitting through the morning call docket (either in person or on the phone) which can sometimes last hours, Supplemental Local Rule 7.055(8)(b) allows you to avoid that by notifying presiding court by 4:45 p.m. the day before call that you are unconditionally ready to go for your trial or hearing.
Even though the local rules refer to calling presiding court the day before to report ready, presiding court will also accept this notification via email. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, you may call presiding court at 971.274.0660 or email at MUL.Presiding@ojd.state.or.us.
The downside of reporting in advance is that, pursuant to this rule, you lose your right to affidavit a judge. Therefore, if it possible that you will be affidaviting a judge you will need to report at call so that you can orally announce your intention to affidavit the judge when the assignment is made, and then you must follow up with the actual affidavit. Local rules do not allow a lawyer to affidavit a judge before the assignment has been made. If, however, you want to notify the presiding judge that a particular judge would likely recuse themselves from your case that would not fall under the category of affidaviting the judge, so you could provide this information to presiding court when reporting the day before. The presiding judge would simply check with that judge, if that judge was going to be assigned to your case, to see if in fact the judge is going to recuse.
Another option to save time that many civil lawyers use is to arrive in the courtroom, or call in, closer to 10 a.m. because the criminal docket often takes at least an hour.
The best way to learn of your trial/hearing assignment is to check OECI (public Odyssey) which will show the time of the hearing and the judge assigned. OECI is updated right after call. You could also call or email presiding court later in the day and they can let you know. But with all presiding court staff have going on, they aren’t able to call or email everyone who reported - they mainly rely on attorneys checking OECI.
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