Judging Amy

Amy Madison Gray struggles to adjust to the new circumstances in her life as she separates from her husband and becomes a single mother to her young daughter, Lauren; moves from Manhattan to Hartford, CT to live with her opinionated mother Maxine, a retired social worker; and starts a new career as a superior court judge in family court. The first case on her docket, the placement of a child abandoned by a drug addicted mother, introduces her to the shortcomings and political realities of the juvenile justice system.

Short calendar day drops 54 cases on Amy's docket, and the long day stretches into night when she's forced to make a life and death decision about the fate of an abused child; Maxine decides to return to work; Amy's confrontation with Lauren's obnoxious new teacher leaves her with yet another responsibility in an already jam-packed calendar.

Sitting in for a friend who's undergoing chemotherapy, Amy presides over her first jury trial and clashes with a former law school classmate who represents the parents of a murdered girl who are suing the parents of her teenaged killer; Maxine shops for a new car for the first time in her life; Vincent feels that Maxine doesn't take his writing seriously after she interrupts his work to ask him to babysit the six rambunctious first graders attending Lauren's sleepover party.

Amy must determine if a comatose boy who is believed to have healing powers is being abused by his grandmother; Maxine clashes with her supervisor over taking an underfed little girl away from her anorexic mother; Vincent begins a relationship with an older woman.

A death threat, coupled with Maxine's disapproval, puts a crimp in Amy's blossoming relationship with Tracy; Vincent begins to feel like he's Chris's pet project; Maxine rekindles an old friendship; Amy officiates at Donna's wedding to a convict; Maxine helps a second generation foster teenager keep her infant son out of the system.

A woman fights for custody of her son after the boy's father claims that her practice of the Wiccan religion makes her an unfit mother; Vincent gets an agent; in the week before Halloween, Lauren gets spooked by some older boys; Amy confronts narrow-minded attitudes at the P.T.A. meeting; in direct defiance of Susie's orders, Maxine pursues the search for a boy missing from a family with a history of child abuse.

As the Gray family tries to cope with the aftermath of the explosion, Maxine cuts back on her workload to help Vincent through his difficult recovery, while Amy realizes that she's still harboring resentment towards Vincent for putting himself in danger to save her life; Gillian takes a forceful approach to Maxine's avoiding Ned; Amy hires an attorney to counter Ian's accusations; Maxine ducks Jared's calls on Edward's birthday; Amy's new C.S.O. is everything that Bruce is not; Vincent's reluctance to leave the hospital causes him to conceal his progress from his family; after telling Bruce to lighten his docket, Judge Salinger is displeased to discover that Bruce has transferred a case to Amy hoping that she will render a more just ruling for a young boy caught in a bureaucratic morass; Sean urges Maxine to get back to work by taking on several sexual abuse cases from the same preschool; Amy refuses to allow a severely depressed mother who is grief-stricken over the recent death of he

Maxine goes overboard in mothering Vincent after he's released from the hospital and moves back into her house to recuperate; Amy sentences a teenager accused of bullying small children; Donna uncovers incriminating information about Ian; Lauren's soccer coach turns out to be an old friend of Amy's; after the police reach a dead end in a child molestation accusation, Maxine stumbles upon the ammunition needed to reopen the case; Lauren lays a guilt trip on Amy about her being a work-outside-the-home mother; Amy demands a written apology after the investigation about her relationship with Bruce is dropped for insufficient evidence; when Gillian and Amy disagree about babysitters, Peter disagrees with his wife's plans to quit her job; after presiding over the case of a teenager whose infant son died after she left him on the steps of a church, Amy goes ballistic when a father at one of the soccer games becomes verbally abusive; Amy gets Bruce transferred back to her court, and is shocke

Vincent returns to work; Gillian nervously agrees to allow Donna to babysit for Ned so that she and Peter can have a romantic wedding anniversary celebration; Amy takes an instant dislike to Lolly's husband when she accepts an invitation to dinner; after Russell's mother begs him to recall her son's last moments, Vincent pores over the police tapes, struggling to remember; Amy decides the fate of a teenager found guilty of accidentally killing a classmate; Maxine incurs Sean's displeasure when she hands out a condom during the birth control class she volunteers to teach on her own time; Amy is distraught when she realizes that she was greatly mistaken in dismissing a stalking claim as frivolous.

Amy contends with a high profile attorney who attempts to bully her during a paternity case; Maxine struggles over mending fences with a neighbor; Vincent's near-death experience gives him a sense of fearlessness that gets him into trouble with Len; Peter questions his ability to raise a biracial child after he ignores a collegue's racist remarks; Maxine continues her investigation into sexual abuse at a preschool; Amy and Lolly take a self-defense course together.

Amy seeks to have Lauren qualified as a ""gifted"" student; Maxine agrees to take a anger management class after going too far in insulting a coworker and accosting the boy who vandalized the Gray home; Amy dates a detective who's ""out of her league""; Vincent agrees to be Donna's birthing partner; Amy presides at the sentencing hearing for a teenager who intentionally maimed a rival player during a hockey game.

Amy is as shocked as Lauren is pleased to learn of Michael and Leisha's impending wedding; sensing that Maxine has reservations about their relationship, Jared suggests that they take some time away from each other in order to gain a little perspective; Vincent is attracted to a producer he meets when he's invited to read his short stories on the radio; Amy must decide if an alcoholic mother responsible for the death of her daughter has recovered enough to regain custody of her son and retain custody of her unborn child; Maxine is distressed when the state's attorney declines to file charges in the Roseland case; Bruce unhappily assents when Mia suggests that Rebecca spend more time with her in New York; Amy hears the case of a divorcing couple fighting over frequent flyer miles.

After pleas from Maxine and Peter, Amy takes the first step in mending fences with Vincent; back in town with a new job working in the prosecutor's office, Stu Collins has a near-fatal heart attack after a verbal altercation with Amy, who is unable to contact any of his friends or family; Maxine tries to help a couple who cannot agree about giving up the special needs child they adopted, but is unable to avert the tragic outcome of their dilemma; the teenage son of a mobster appears in Amy's court for setting a fire which destroyed a store and maimed an employee after an argument with the store's owner; on the road to recovery, Stu confesses to Amy that he's had a crush on her for years; Amy and Bruce test the boundaries of their relationship.

Vincent and Amy are frantic when Maxine disappears; Carole ignores a lump on her breast; Amy suspects a lawyer of exploiting starving children and also hears the case of two kids who attack a Live the Lord club and try to excuse it by saying that the club should not be meeting on school grounds.

Amy must decide the appropriate punishments for a high school gang leader who tortured an undercover police officer, and for a teenage girl who perpetrated day-trading fraud; Maxine helps an abused little girl at Sanctuary House locate her long-lost dog; Donna goes to annoying extremes to make Vincent's novel a success; Sean tries to get Maxine to spend more time at D.C.F. and less at Sanctuary House; before he sets off on a pilgrimage, Stuart does his best to seduce Amy.

Amy must rule on the fate of conjoined twins; Jared proposes to Maxine before taking a job in China; Carole tries to push Vincent away after she learns the lump on her breast is malignant.

Amy hears the case of two teenagers accused of causing the suicide of a classmate by deliberately posting lies about her sexual activity on their web site. The long arm of politics reaches out to Maxine and exacts a heavy penalty for her tirade against the lieutenant governor. Amy gives her support to Bruce's Gun 101 program. Vincent returns from his weekend trip and tells Donna that he and Carole flew to Las Vegas and eloped. Carole has already moved on to San Francisco, where Vincent will join her in a few days to be with her during her cancer surgery. Unaware that he hasn't mentioned any of this to his family, Donna lets the news slip to Amy. Amy tries, but fails, to reconcile with her brother. Maxine urges Vincent not to turn away from the love and support that his family is offering which will help him get through this crisis. She tells Amy and Vincent to knock it off and end whatever disagreement is causing them to be estranged from each other.

Amy must decide whether to modify a custody agreement and allow a woman to take her daughter to Paris for two years against the wishes of the girl's father; back to work at the DCF, Maxine takes on the case of ""Bubble Man"", a homeless man who is about to be arrested for blowing bubbles in the park without a permit, and shows Robert some tricks of the trade to save an abused boy; Bruce works with a mother who is about to lose custody of her son for not meeting the conditions of his probation because she is in denial about the emotional toll her son's disability has taken on her; Maxine brokers a peace settlement and gets Amy and Vincent speaking again by suggesting that Amy review Vincent's contract with the studio that has optioned his novel; Carole's condition worsens unexpectedly, and Vincent leaves hurriedly, amid many tears and in possession of the family's good luck totem, the ""surfing monkey"".

Amy and Michael agree to work out Lauren's custody with a mediator; Maxine and Kimberly clash over a child lost in the system; Jared returns from China to get an answer from Maxine; Lauren fears that their apartment is haunted and Amy begins to agree with her; appearing before Amy in court as the caseworker for a teenaged mother, Maxine gives an impassioned plea which provides Amy with food for thought about not only the girl, but Amy's relationships with Maxine and Lauren; Bruce runs into Amy and spurns her offer of friendship, but later relents most emphatically.

Amy's discovers that the man the police have in custody may not be her stalker after all; Maxine refuses to give up on a client who may be the victim of police brutality; after Bruce denies having romantic feelings for Amy and they agree that confusion and alcohol led to their embrace, they decide to be friends who don't kiss; Kyle applies for a residency and is confronted by his sponsor for not working his program; a persistent attorney paves the way for Bruce to regain his court position; Amy must decide if a retarded teenager is competent to make her own reproductive choices.

As Amy decides the fate of a ten year old boy who was kidnapped by his adoptive parents when they lost custody to his birth mother, she finds an answer to some of her own family's pressing concerns; Bruce is back at work as Amy's C.S.O. and is completing his community service at a soup kitchen; Amy gets the silent treatment from Lauren when she won't let her become a cheerleader, but both sides are forced to relent when Gillian unwittingly spills the beans about her own and Amy's cheerleading pasts; Maxine's refusal to sell her house to buyers she doesn't like leaves Peter feeling angry and unappreciated, so she hatches a plan that heals both him and a badly abused client; at the behest of his sponsor, Kyle applies to every residency program in the area, and Amy agrees to write him a letter of recommendation; Maxine finally finds the perfect buyer for her house.

Amy presides over the custody hearing of a boy whose mother died in the collapse of the World Trade Center; an old friend offers Kyle a job with a pharmaceutical company, and Maxine counteroffers with the job of heading the Center; Amy relandscapes her new home and accidently throws out Ethel, the antique heirloom rosebush Maxine's grandmother brought over from Ireland in 1889; after initially spurning her offer, Bruce agrees to speak at Zola's press conference for convicted felons; and Maxine helps Sean over some rough spots as Eric's foster father.

Amy must decide whether a teenager is responsible for the death of an infant she was babysitting; Maxine investigates an abuse case at the home of a disabled veteran and his adopted granddaughter; Kyle is torn between keeping his lucrative job as a pharmaceutical rep or accepting a residency at a low-ranked hospital; Amy has an alarm system installed in the house as her stalker escalates his harassment; Maxine and Peter are at odds after Maxine attributes Peter's promotion within the ranks of a Revolutionary War reenactment group to the publicity surrounding her engagement to Jared.

Amy must decide if a student raped his teacher or was seduced by her; Kyle is unhappy about his nonmedical duties at St. Michael's; Maxine tries to locate the mother of an abandoned newborn; after Jason menaces Amy while she's driving Lauren and Eric home, Bruce suggests getting a restraining order; fearing the worst about her health, Gillian gets the diagnosis she's dreamed of for years.

When Amy is transferred to criminal court, Bruce stays behind in juvenile court, and she inherits Spencer, an insolent clerk; Lauren has an extremely unhappy first day at junior high, but things brighten up on day two when, much to her mother's dismay, she finds a boyfriend who is a year older; after accepting Stuart's proposal, Amy begins to have nightmares about the wedding; recently unemployed as a result of budget cuts, Donna helps Peter care for his sons while Gillian languishes in a coma; Ellen, D.C.F.'s newest employee, uses her experience as a former foster child to help Maxine deal with a teenager who's run away from her foster home; fed up with his impudence and disloyalty, Amy fires Spencer and hires Donna, who's recently graduated from law school; Amy's predecessor in the criminal division threatens her with retribution after she considers overturning his decision to suppress evidence in a capital murder case; Gillian finally emerges from her coma.

After she's released from the hospital with a clean bill of health, Gillian reveals that she had a near-death experience during Walt's delivery, but can't seem to find anyone who believes her; when Amy claims that she has no time to organize the wedding, Stu volunteers to make all the arrangements; tragedy occurs when Maxine's pleas to the police to publicize the disappearance of a foster child fall on deaf ears; it's apparent that there's no love lost between Stu and David when they end up at the same cocktail party; Kyle and Lily have an intense encounter in a hospital elevator; Amy's frustration with the difference between the criminal and juvenile court systems increases as the Hawkins trial concludes; Kyle is unsuccessful in his attempt to get Lily to change her mind about moving to New York.

Maxine criticizes Amy's ruling that an emotionally-fragile girl is competent to serve as a witness in her mother's murder trial. Kyle, who doesn't know how he himself made it safely home after a night of heavy drinking, has to give medical treatment to a drunken driver who killed one of his hospital co-workers on the road. Lauren receives a poor grade in math and blames it on the teacher.

Amy presides over the case of a prominent athletic star accused of rape. Maxine, feeling the pressure to find a new place to live, considers selling the diner. Kyle tries to locate a kidney for a young patient who needs a transplant. Stu and Amy still can't come to terms on where to go for their honeymoon, with their wedding only a month away.

Still grieving over the loss of Jared, Maxine finds it difficult to listen to Amy and Stu plan their wedding; Bruce is less than thrilled working for Judge Bell; Gillian is sad and irritable that she's having difficulty bonding to Walt, and can't seem to talk to Peter about what's troubling her; Kyle feels betrayed when Lily makes her decision about the new attending physician; Amy teaches Lauren and her friends a harsh lesson about popularity, friendship, and the cruelty of cliques; after Zola seeks Amy's help in reaching out to Bruce, he confesses that her role in the Jason Darby case may have put an end to their relationship; Kyle is put in legal jeopardy when he saves the life of a man injured in a bar fight; Maxine overcomes her initial skepticism about the latest claims coming from a young boy known for filing false complaints against the men in his mother's life, and discovers that this latest accusation may have merit, much to the dismay of the boy's mother, who doesn't wa

In court for the sentencing phase of a capital murder trial, Amy must decide whether to stop the proceedings when one of the lawyers makes inappropriate remarks in the course of his closing argument. In a private dinner with Lauren, Stu reveals a hitherto hidden fear of children. Kyle feels awkward on meeting his new boss, who he discovers he already knows from an AA meeting.

With all three of her children living once again under the same roof with her, Maxine finally decides to let them be the grownups that they are (horseplay notwithstanding) and fix their own breakfasts; the ceiling in Amy's courtroom collapses, and she is sentenced to a stint in Accountability court, which she deems a punishment for her ruling in the Casey Ives matter; shortly after his return from New Mexico, David is devastated to discover that the man who holds the secret to his wife's murder has died; Ignacio asks Amy to plead his case with Maxine; Sean asks Maxine to track down the missing placement records on a little boy, and they discover that there's no trace of him anywhere; Heather visits Kyle to ask his forgiveness, announce that she's entering into a treatment program, and tell him about their son, but he doesn't believe any of it; Maxine relents her stance on Ignacio a little by allowing him to fix the broken sprinklers in the garden; Amy tries to figure out what's behind

Vincent's struggles with his latest novel leads him into blowing off his agent, who responds by dropping Vincent and demanding the return of the advance that Vincent's already spent; Maxine receives another award, and uses her acceptance speech to talk about the young boy lost in the system that she and Sean can't seem to locate; Amy's dealings with two troubled teenage girls and their mothers in Accountability court inspires her to change her focus when she returns to Juvenile Court; Maxine tries to avoid removing the children of a overburdened single mother working to overcome anger and abuse issues; David finally feels that he's put his wife's death behind him and can now pursue a relationship with Amy; Ignacio lets Maxine know that he's ready to do whatever it takes to have a future with her; Amy fires Donna to propel her into practicing law; Kyle decides to accompany Heather to Minnesota and take care of their son while she's in rehab.

After Vincent asks his brother to lend him the money he needs to pay back the advance on his novel, Peter meets with his accountant to free up the funds and discovers that his business is headed toward insolvency; Maxine sets some strict boundaries for Ignacio, who soon realizes that it's time to divorce Francesca; Amy is back in juvenile court and immediately has a conflict with Bruce over the pace at which her docket is moving, but she persists in digging deeper into the case of a twelve year old boy who admitted to a felony murder; even though the publicity generates a lot of leads, Sean is upset when the Anthony Byrd case makes the paper, which recommends that they be fired for losing Anthony in the system; David buys a boat, but can't convince Amy to overcome her aversion to sailing; Maxine's teenage client mounts a publicity campaign to find an adoptive family before he graduates from high school; Donna resigns as Amy's clerk after accepting a position as a court-appointed minor

Amy has difficulty dealing with Lauren's need for privacy; blinded by Anthony Bird's loss, Maxine lies to Sean and makes all the wrong choices in dealing with a teenaged boy who's holed up in a hotel room after discovering that he was kidnapped by his mother as a child; Amy must determine if aggravated sexual assault occurred between two teenagers attending a sex party, but can't seem to leave the case in the courtroom when she encounters Lauren at home; Gillian takes the news of their financial difficulties well, and offers Peter her support; Vincent confesses to Gillian that he's no longer working on his book; Amy resists David's attempts to redefine their relationship.

Maxine teeters on the brink of collapse as she refuses to move out of Colton Gerard's hotel room, rages against Sean for his failure to run the department properly, and is suspended after being arrested for slapping a foster child who has abused and neglected her elderly and ailing foster mother; Vincent gets an eye-opening look at his life through the eyes of a teenager in foster care who was abused by his mother; Peter's praise of Gillian's mothering skills draws them closer together when they meet with their son's teacher, and they are shocked to discover that Ned is biting other children because his genius-level I.Q. leaves him bored with school; Donna is angry when an over-controlling Amy steamrollers right over her and the State's Attorney in a misguided attempt to help Donna win her first case as an attorney and ensure that her mentally ill teenaged client receives the help he desperately needs from the system; distressed about her mother's arrest and refusal to return home, Amy

Back at work from her suspension, Maxine is becoming unhinged as she desperately searches for Anthony Byrd; Amy spends a tense day awaiting the results of a breast biopsy; Donna's summation reveals how closely she identifies with the teenage client she represents in Amy's court; Peter and Gillian search for a school for Ned; Amy arrives home to find an unconscious Maxine on the kitchen floor.