Speedup in County Civil Cases Is Called ‘Remarkable’ Success

A pilot program to speed the pace of civil cases in Orange County Superior Court has proved so successful that four more judges will be added to the project, a participating judge said Tuesday.

Superior Court Judge John C. Woolley, who has been involved with the program since its inception, said that while the program has showed encouraging results, it has also meant a much heavier workload and a resulting increase in office staff.

Still, Woolley said he was “gratified” at the findings of a report by the National Center for State Courts that singled out the county for “remarkable” results.

In Orange County, the study released Tuesday said, 83% of the civil cases under the new system were completed within 1 year of the time the suit was filed; just 23% of such cases handled under traditional systems elsewhere were completed in that time.

“We’re quite encouraged by the report,” Woolley said. “I think we can lay our success to the cooperation between the bench and the bar. We have had very good cooperation with the attorneys involved.”

Woolley said that in the 15 months since the expedited trial program began, the four judges involved have been assigned 650 cases, and two of the departments have disposition rates of more than 90%.

Four more judges will join the project in June. The other Superior Court judges now in the program are Robert A. Knox, Judith M. Ryan and Gary L. Taylor.

The 3-year project was required by a state law, effective Jan. 1, 1988, in nine counties with the heaviest backlogs of civil cases. Other counties have begun speedup programs on their own.

A key feature of the program, which most of the nine counties have adopted, includes assigning individual judges to handle or monitor each case at all stages, rather than the standard system of assigning each phase of a case to a different judge, according to the study.

Judges are also setting deadlines for different stages of each case and requiring attorneys to give reasons for failing to meet a deadline.

The study also found gains in Los Angeles County, where court delays have been the state’s most serious, and in four other urban counties: San Diego, Riverside, Sacramento and San Francisco.

But in Alameda, Contra Costa and Kern counties, civil cases moved no faster in the last year, chiefly because judges and courtrooms have been occupied with a heavy load of criminal cases and other high-priority matters going to trial, the report said.

It also said that despite the speedup in handling cases in most areas, all of the counties in the project feared future slowdowns because of a lack of judges to bring all the cases to trial.

The study did not mention a recent development in San Diego County, where a backlog of criminal cases and a shortage of judges forced the presiding Superior Court judge to block new civil trials from starting in mid-February.

The delay-reduction program got a mixed reaction from 486 lawyers questioned, with 61% saying their time standards under the program are too stringent and an even split on whether the delay-reduction program lessened the quality of justice in the courts.

Woolley said, however, that the system has not proved detrimental to the quality of justice in Orange County.

“If attorneys feel that the pace does not fit the case,” he said, “they can petition and suggest a new time line for handling (cases). The quality will not be affected by rushing things through too fast because they can request a slowdown.”

In Los Angeles County, civil cases continued to take 3 to 4 years to complete, but the average time was reduced by 7 to 10 months in the first year of the program.