Wirt Norris' lawyers want his civil trial speeded up.

Will Hallman's family has been trying for the last 18 months to move their child molestation lawsuit against former diving coach Wirt Norris down the road. And Norris has been trying with equal vigor to run it into a ditch.

So it was a little strange last month when the attorney for the Hallmans asked a judge to hit the brakes on the Hallmans' own lawsuit -- and even more so when Norris' legal team asked the same judge to let them step on the gas.

As it turns out, the curious flip-flop wasn't the first in this case. An appellate court made an equally abrupt switch a month before, taking the rare step of retracting an opinion favorable to Norris without hinting at a reason why. The role reversal involving the attorneys had less to do with how either side hopes the case turns out than with who gets what when. In some Zen-like calculus where less is more, the Hallmans, at least for the time being, seem to have prevailed.

Norris, a 76-year-old former Boys Club coach and real estate broker with ties to Cowtown's upper crust, has been accused in a civil lawsuit and a criminal indictment of sexually molesting Will when he was a 12-year-old during the mid-1990s. Will's father, William P. Hallman, is an attorney with one of the city's most influential law firms that counts members of the billionaire Bass family among its clients.

Will is Norris' only accuser to come forward within the statute of limitations. But about 10 other men, many now well settled in middle age, have given statements to attorneys, law enforcement officials, or journalists in which they have brought similar accusations against the man they once trusted.

In a hearing last week before Tarrant County 96th District Court Judge Jeff Walker, Hallman family attorney Bill Kirkman sought to freeze progress in the civil lawsuit for the next six months to give prosecutors time to try Norris in criminal court. The criminal trial, now set for Nov. 29, presumably would conclude in December, several weeks before the civil lawsuit would be taken out to thaw.

Kirkman complained that the pending criminal case had made working on the civil lawsuit more difficult because Norris has repeatedly refused to answer questions, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination. Norris has, for example, cited the Fifth Amendment on an array of questions ranging from a request to state his name to "whether he molested the many other men who have come forward,'' Kirkman said. The pending criminal trial, he said, "has significantly impeded our ability to obtain discovery.''

But one of Norris' civil attorneys, Chuck Aris, accused Kirkman of unfairly trying to shut down Norris' civil defense by putting the lawsuit on ice. The Hallmans' motion to temporarily stop the lawsuit would block Norris' defense team from taking depositions just when Aris said he was gearing up to do so. Aris complained that Kirkman has taken seven depositions to his one.

There was more at stake in the hearing, however, than whether Norris could avoid answering further pointed question from Kirkman. In court papers, the Hallmans say the abuse Will suffered at Norris' hands sent him swirling through a depression that almost claimed his life. And the voluminous records of the extensive medical and psychiatric treatment he received have been at the center of another running fight between lawyers on both sides.

The Hallmans have given some of the records to Aris, but they were accompanied with a protective order signed by Judge Walker that prohibits the attorney from making them public or sharing them with others -- including Mike Ware, Norris' criminal lawyer who also serves as co-counsel on the civil case.

Exactly what's contained in the medical file isn't publicly known. But in a previous court proceeding Aris said they include accusations from Will that he had been abused by two other men the year before he says Norris abused him. If true, that type of so-called exculpatory information, information that might tend to point the finger for Will's troubles at someone besides Norris, would be useful to defense attorneys in both the civil and criminal court cases. Kirkman has repeatedly refused to discuss the contents of the medical records except to say that the assertion that Will accused others is false and based on errors in the records themselves.

Ware has tried to get his hands on the same records for use in the criminal case, thus far without success. When Walker turned him down, Ware challenged his ruling before the Second Court of Appeals -- and won a Pyrrhic victory.

In an opinion issued in April, Justice Sue Walker concluded that the trial court "abused its discretion by prohibiting disclosure of admittedly discernable, admissible documents" to Ware and ordered the lower court judge to dissolve his ruling. Then, in a seldom-seen move, the appellate court withdrew its ruling without any public explanation. The withdrawal order noted that the court was keeping Ware's appeal "under submission'' but offered no clue about why the opinion was withdrawn or when or if a new one would be issued. Justice Walker declined comment, through a surrogate, on her appellate court flip-flop.

Kirkman said during the hearing last week that freezing the lawsuit would tie the appellate court's hands. If the case lies dormant for six months, so would Ware's appeal, he reasoned.

Judge Jeff Walker eventually granted Kirkman's request to halt his own lawsuit for six months.

The judge said the ability of attorneys on both sides to gather facts had been impeded by the pending criminal case "in just about every way involved.'' He also expressed concerns that publicity about the civil case, which he said had taken on an air of "notoriety,'' might make it difficult for lawyers in the criminal case to find an impartial jury.

While the Hallmans have succeeded, for the moment at least, in keeping Will's medical records out of Ware's hands, it's clear that the issue is far from being resolved. In an interview before the hearing, Ware said he was "amazed at the extent of the effort invested to prevent me from reviewing the medical records. As to what earth-shattering revelations these documents contain, I can only guess. Certainly they must promise to bolster the case of the defense in some very important way. Otherwise, why the fuss?''

During the hearing, Ware also raised the possibility that the criminal trial could be delayed if he was unable to get the records, saying "it would be malpractice for me to go forward in the criminal case without that information.''

Kirkman told Judge Walker that the Hallmans have no objection to Ware getting the records from the civil case once the criminal trial is over. In an interview with the Weekly, he said he would "personally hand-deliver them after the criminal trial is over.'' But giving Ware records used in the civil trial for use in the criminal trial would, Kirkman said, "give him [Ware] an advantage for his client that he would otherwise not be able to get.''

Kirkman also disputed the suggestion that his request for a six-month freeze was an indication that the Hallmans were losing their appetite for the civil claim against Norris.

"You hide and watch what we do after that criminal trial is over,'' Kirkman said. "Even if he [Norris] is exonerated, they [the Hallmans] will pursue this case. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.''