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Lawyer Delivers Oral Argument Before Supreme Court While Wife Is In Labor

And no, it wasn't a labor law case.

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Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: I could be missing the birth of my child!

What could possibly be more stressful than delivering an oral argument before the Supreme Court? Delivering an oral argument before the Supreme Court while your pregnant wife is in labor a state away and worrying that you’ll miss the other most important delivery of your life.

This is exactly what happened to Trevor Cox, Virginia’s former acting solicitor general when he delivered his oral argument in Collins v. Virginia — and no, it wasn’t a labor law case.

Cox, a 2009 Harvard Law graduate who now works as counsel at Hunton Andrews Kurth, revealed this competing delivery disaster in the annual holiday card that he sent to family and friends in December. Dan Diamond of POLITICO Pulse shared a portion of that card on Twitter (with his friend’s permission, of course), where he said Cox’s story gave him “secondhand stress.” Take a look and pray to whatever god you believe in that you’ll never be forced to handle this amount of stress:

(Photo via Dan Diamond / Twitter)

“Extremely impressive humblebrag. God tier,” noted one of Diamond’s Twitter followers. “This may be a humblebrag least worthy of being humble,” said another.

Trevor Cox (Photo via Hunton Andrews Kurth)

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What’s more is that Cox, who took his fair share of intellectual blows from the justices during oral argument, never even mentioned what was going on back home before he began presenting his case before the high court, and his stoicism was mentioned by NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg in her summation of the day’s arguments:

It was a tough session for Cox — tougher than the justices knew. As soon as he got outside the courtroom he was on the phone to the delivery room back home, where his wife was about to give birth to his first child.

Congratulations to Trevor Cox and his wife on the birth of their daughter. Hopefully this year’s holiday card from the Cox family will be a little less stress-inducing.

Staci ZaretskyStaci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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