Rebuilding Justice by Dirk Olin

Author:Dirk Olin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
Published: 2011-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Excess and Access: Consensus on the American Civil Justice Landscape (Gerety 2011).

Cost is not the only factor at work here; significant delay is also a problem. In 2007, the percentage of civil cases more than three years old was 6.6 percent—in 2010, it was 15.8 percent of all cases.15 Of the cases included in the 2008 IAALS study of federal litigation, roughly one-third took more than one year to resolve.16 More and more cases are languishing. Too many of America’s courtrooms will come to resemble a freeway in gridlock—an artery designed for fluid transportation that more often approximates a parking lot. An incident or accident that might take seconds to unfold on the street or in a boardroom can take years to be examined and debated in a courtroom.

Delays in civil litigation are not only frustrating, they cost money. More than 90 percent of the American College Fellow respondents, 82 percent of the American Bar Association respondents, 79 percent of the general counsel respondents, and 73 percent of the National Employment Lawyers Association respondents indicated that delays in litigation run up the costs.17 The Federal Judicial Center analysis supports this, finding that every 1 percent increase in case duration is associated with a 0.32 percent increase in costs for plaintiffs and a 0.26 percent increase in costs for defendants.18 Time means money. Furthermore, in the American College, American Bar Association, and National Employment Lawyers Association surveys, the “time required to complete discovery” was identified over any other single cause as the primary cause of delay.19 Over 80 percent of respondents to the IAALS and Searle Center survey of judges identified the time required to complete discovery as a significant cause of delay—ranking highest of all options given.20

During the delay, litigants can feel economic pressure to settle the case even when they believe they would prevail on the merits. If they do not settle, they have to contend with increasingly fading memories, then wait longer still for financial resolution and emotional closure. And lengthy cases affect more than the litigants. From the judge’s perspective, cases that linger on the docket squander time and resources that could be spent on other matters, and they often require redundant efforts as turnover occurs among the ranks of judicial officers. For attorneys, long cases similarly devour resources (albeit at frequently high rates of pay) and cause client-attorney dissatisfaction. And for the general public, extended cases epitomize governmental inefficiency, eroding confidence in the judicial system.

Furthermore, the 2008 IAALS docket study found that the same type of case can take an average of two or three times longer to resolve in one federal district court than in another.21

As a practical matter, this means that litigants can wait months or even years longer for a resolution to their dispute, simply because the case was filed in one court rather than another. This sends a pernicious, even decivilizing, message to the public: justice is relative. The other message from that research is that delay is not inevitable; it can be managed and reduced.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.