Delay In Courts And Court Management

Author : Administration of Justice Committee
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780243013531
Total Pages : 596 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (135 download)

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Download or read book COURT MGMT STUDY written by Administration of Justice Committee and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-01-13 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Court Management Study, Vol. 2: Reports of the Court Management Study Submitted to the District of Columbia Courts and Related Agencies by the Committee on the Administration of Justice of the Judicial Council; May 1970 A number Of Court personnel believed the Court should be charged with delay only after a Certificate of Readiness was filed. Even with this as a measure of effectiveness, the Court's performance was not good. The delay between filing a Certificate of Readiness and trial in FY 1968 motor vehicle personal injury trials was one year or more in 88 percent of the cases, 18 months or more in 70 percent of the cases, and two years or more in 32 percent of the cases. Although the Court's calendar status reports indicate the delay was shorter, those reports measured delay based on scheduled dates for pretrial and trial rather than actual dates. By filing motions, requests for con tinuan-ces, etc., attorneys were able in many cases to defer going to pretrial and trial until some time after the scheduled dates. The two major changes in civil calendar control methods made in the past 10 years were the adoption of a Certificate of Readiness procedure in April, 1958, and the use, beginning in December, 1959, of Examiners to conduct all pretrials. Neither has been effective in terms of reducing trial delay. In evaluating the effectiveness Of the Examiner system, the Court has stressed the fact that the Examiners have relieved the judges of the time-consuming burden of conducting pretrials, conducting the semiannual call of the calendar, and hearing certain motions. It is true that the Examiners have relieved the judges Of a considerable amount of non-trial work but it does not automatically follow that the work Of the Court has thereby been advanced. A more meaningful criteria for measuring the effectiveness of the Examiner system would be to measure the impact the system has had on trial delay, and despite a substantial reduction in civil litigation, trial delay has increased since establishment of the Examiner system in 1959. In FY 1959 the median time interval from issue to trial was 21 months in jury cases; it was 29 months in FY 1968. In non-jury cases this interval was 17 months in FY 1959; it was 19 months in FY 1968. It is, therefore, apparent that the Court's existing system of calendar con trol, of which the Examiner system is a major part, has not proved effective in reducing delay. Thus, we believe the Court needs to make substantial modifications in its existing system and needs to experi ment with calendar control techniques successfully employed by other courts. Our detailed analysis of the Court's current calendar control system and our suggestions for improvement are contained in sub sequent sections of this report. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.