At the judges' bench.
As the presiding judge, Zhang Mengwei had known about Su Bai's statement of claims long beforehand.
Because this case...
During the preparation and the filing of the complaint and appeal.
No matter how one looked at it, there were only two key allegations.
Namely, the two points Su Bai had stated: infringement of the right of name and infringement of the right to education.
Zhang Mengwei briefly organized the relevant documents and made a rough mental summary of those two points.
Then he turned his gaze toward the defendant's side.
"Does counsel for the defendant have any statements to make regarding the plaintiff's allegations against the defendant, or anything to rebut?"
This time, only the defendant's retained lawyer had appeared in court.
As Ye Meizhen's retained lawyer, and also a well-known civil litigation lawyer in Zhou City.
Zhou Liang was thoroughly familiar with the trial procedures at the Zhou City Intermediate Court.
He also understood the local judicial environment all too well.
Although the judicial environment was not terrible, with no serious wrongful convictions or pronounced bias in judgments.
A degree of bias in judgments, and openly favoring one side on legal grounds, were very common.
There was another point.
What did a judgment primarily depend on?
It primarily depended on the presiding judge.
When Wang Qirui had approached their law firm and retained them for this trial, he had made himself very clear.
They did not need to do too much at this trial, nor did they need to offer any particularly forceful rebuttals.
They only needed to look for favorable points based on the other side's evidence.
As long as they could rebut the other side and had grounds for doing so, that would suffice.
They did not need to concern themselves with anything