First Monday in October (film)

The death of Stanley Moorehead, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, has created a vacancy on the high court. The president's appointee turns out to be Ruth Loomis, a staunch conservative from Orange County, California, who is confirmed as the first female Associate Justice.

She and Associate Justice Daniel Snow, a committed liberal who is many years older than Loomis and with many years on the Supreme Court, clash intellectually on just about every judicial issue before them. One case involves a pornographic film and involves arguments about freedom of speech.

Another is a lawsuit, sent up from the lower court, brought by a company's stockholders regarding the suppression of a possibly revolutionary new power source, a momentum engine. The patent is controlled by the board of directors of Omnitech International, and its CEO Donald Richards, who has not been seen in public for a decade and is unavailable by subpoena.

With time, the two judges develop a liking and respect for each other. They realize this while Snow is recovering in the hospital from a "heart episode" suffered while he and Loomis were debating the complexities of the momentum engine/Omnitech case, after hours, in the courthouse.

Based on something Snow intimated during their debate, Loomis returns to Orange County, overnight. There, in a records storage center, she discovers proof that her late husband and his law firm covered up the death of their client, Donald Richards. Because of her former association with the law firm, she concludes she has a serious conflict of interest on the Omnitech case, and must now resign her Associate Justice position. When Snow hears this, he leaves the hospital abruptly and after more debate, talks her out of resigning. They head by taxi to the Supreme Court to announce her discovery, one that will no doubt shake up the Omnitech case and get it on the docket for the high court to review.

At the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 47% of 975 viewers liked The First Monday in October. The film carries an average rating of 3.1/5.

New York Times critic Janet Maslin opened her review of the film with two questions: “What if the latest Supreme Court Justice were a woman? And what if that woman were a terrible pill?” concisely summarizing her problems with the film, which clearly showed signs of having been rushed to market. She praised Matthau's performance and found fault with the character of Justice Ruth Loomis but pointed to the screenplay as “the main source of difficulty. The authors' idea is to confront a crotchety liberal Justice, Dan Snow, with the sprightly, more conservative Ruth Loomis, and let the sparks fly. However, Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Lee have a way of mistaking hectoring, nagging and all-out nastiness for the stuff of which sparks are made.” Director Ronald Neame came under fire for a variety of errors, including an August scene set with snow and slush and the discordant—to her—casting of The Paper Chase star James Stephens in a role very similar to his one he played in the television series. [2]

First Monday in October was first released on DVD by Paramount Home Video on July 6, 2004. No Blu ray release has been announced.

• First Monday in October at IMDb
• First Monday in October at Rotten Tomatoes