Court Experiment Planned to Trim Civil Case Backlog

In an ambitious bid to untangle the backlog of civil cases clogging the downtown Los Angeles County Courthouse, officials have announced a new program aimed at cutting the time it takes before a lawsuit comes to trial from as long as five years to as little as one.

Officials will launch the three-year experimental program next January to comply with a 1986 law passed by the Legislature. Based on standards drafted by the American Bar Assn., the program gives judges broad new powers to make certain that cases are tried with a minimum of delays.

“We have a serious problem . . . at the present time,” Assistant Presiding Judge Richard P. Byrne said Thursday. “Much of the delay is caused by attorneys not moving cases along and the lack of judicial management. That is the reason the legislation was passed.”

In calling for the civil court changes, state lawmakers said they hoped that by 1991, 90% of the civil litigation that is filed should be completed in one year, 98% in 18 months and virtually all cases within two years.

The only types of litigation that will be exempted under the new rules are juvenile, probate, family law cases and certain other specific procedures, most of which already are completed much more quickly than other types of litigation.

The key to the project lies in how cases will be assigned to judges. Currently, lawsuits are not immediately assigned to judges when they are filed, and those ready for trial must work their way up a lengthy list for the next available open courtroom and available judge. Typically, it now takes three years at the earliest before a case gets that far.

Most times, how long it takes to even make the bottom of the list is up to the lawyers handling the cases, court officials say. Under current procedures, the attorneys decide when to initiate the steps that typically precede an actual trial, everything from pretrial motions to exchanging information with the opposing side.

But the American Bar Assn. standards, Byrne told a group of lawyers Thursday, suggest “judges should be the ones to control the pace of litigation . . . not the lawyers.”

Under the new program, as many as 25 judges, nearly half the judges on the roster of the downtown Los Angeles Superior Court, will assume much of that role. Court officials say they expect as many as half of the 108,000 cases filed downtown each year to be diverted into the new program.

Much like the way federal judges handle cases, the 25 judges will be assigned cases at the time they are filed to oversee them from the pretrial machinations through the trial itself. Moreover, the judges will take control of some cases that have already been filed but are not ready for trial.

Judge H. Walter Croskey, who helped draft the rules for the Los Angeles program, said he anticipates each judge will be responsible for as many as 330 of the so-called “old cases.”

The judges will work off a series of strict deadlines called for under the new state law, dubbed the Trial Court Delay Reduction Act of 1986. The specific rules were drafted by a committee of judges and lawyers.

Although the timetables are only tentative at this point, Judge Robert O’Brien predicted that they could well be the “most traumatic part of these rules.”

The final regulations are scheduled to be adopted by the middle of next month.

But regardless of what the final wording will be, O’Brien said the timetables will be designed to ensure “early, often and vigorous control of these cases by the court.”

Generally, the program calls for attorneys to be given only so many days for a variety of procedural steps. If the deadlines are not met without previous approval from the judge, the penalties can be stiff, ranging from limitations placed on witnesses or evidence to fines or even outright dismissals of the cases.

“We recognize this involves a change,” Byrne said. “And that’s going to require a change in the way we do business. . . . We don’t know whether it will be successful or not. But we’re obligated (under the law) to make a good-faith effort.”

Like other court officials, Byrne said he still believes that the ultimate solution to court overcrowding would be to add more judges and more courtrooms.

In addition to Los Angeles, the program will also be launched in eight other Superior Courts in California, including jurisdictions in San Francisco, Orange, Kern and Riverside counties.