Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Judge D'Metria Benson

Should a lawyer be required to translate court documents into Spanish if a defendant doesn't speak English?

The question has thrust a newly elected Dallas judge into the nation's immigration debate after she set aside a credit card company's court motion – in part because the debtor didn't speak English and the motion documents weren't in Spanish.

Critics of Judge D'Metria Benson, who presides over County Court at Law No. 1, say the court system shouldn't bend over backward for those who don't speak English. But her supporters say she is simply leveling a playing field that has been slanted toward debt collectors for years.

The criticism began after a Jan. 19 hearing in a case involving Citibank South Dakota and Glenn Heights resident Refugio Guzman, who owes the credit card company $15,000.

"I think we're going to have some problems if you've got a defendant here that doesn't speak English," Judge Benson said at the hearing, according to a transcript. "And it doesn't appear that the documents that were sent to him were in Spanish. I have some concerns about that."

Mark Palm, a lawyer for Citibank, told the judge later in the hearing: "I don't know how I was put on notice that the defendant didn't speak English or was obligated to provide our motions in Spanish."

Judge Benson set aside the bank's motion for summary judgment, which requests that a judge rule before trial because the facts are clear. She sent the case into mediation and ordered Mr. Guzman to show up with a translator.

State Rep. Will Hartnett, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he has drafted a bill that would prevent a court from denying a motion because documents are in English. He said he is prepared to file it if similar incidents occur.

"I don't think it's appropriate," said Mr. Hartnett, R-Dallas. "There is no statute or rule that I know of that permits a judge in Texas to force one party to translate a pleading for another party."

Judge Benson is a veteran of the Dallas and Fort Worth city attorney's offices who in recent years has focused on employment discrimination cases. Her court coordinator said the judge couldn't comment on a pending case.

Mr. Palm declined to comment. Other lawyers who work in the county courts, where most debt cases are heard, complained that the judge overstepped her bounds.

Jim Carroll, an attorney who represents creditors, said it would be expensive to translate lawsuits every time a defendant doesn't speak English. And they could risk deceiving someone if there were an error in translation, he said.

"There are rules of civil procedure that talk about who's supposed to translate things," he said. "Someone who doesn't speak English is supposed to get a court-approved translator. It's not the plaintiff's burden to do so."

While interpreters have been used for years in criminal courts, they're less common in the low-profile county courts, where debtors often don't have enough money to hire an attorney.

That has created an unfair system in which efficiency has trumped defendants' rights to understand the allegations against them, said Domingo Garcia, a personal injury lawyer who represents many Spanish-speaking clients.

"What's happened in the past was that attorneys that were representing banks and credit card companies basically just ran roughshod over individuals," he said. "Now that you have judges that actually have a more balanced view, they're just asking the parties to comply with the law."

But immigration reform activists note that Mr. Guzman must have understood what was happening because he had filed an answer to the lawsuit in English. He didn't respond to the summary judgment motion.

"Everything should be done in English. This is America," said Jean Towell, president of Citizens for Immigration Reform, based in Dallas. "They need to learn our language, and we shouldn't have to pay for it."

Mr. Guzman said in court documents that he had fallen behind in his bills because he was raising 10 children and taking care of his sick mother in Mexico.

His son, Pedro Guzman, said he helped his father with the answer. But they didn't realize they had to respond to the summary judgment motion, he said.

"Because he doesn't really know about courts, it would have helped if it was in Spanish," said Pedro Guzman, a recent DeSoto High School graduate who hopes to study law. "It can be in any language just so long as everybody understands what's going on."