Jurists Adopt Plan Matching Single Judge to Each Case : Law: New approach speeds civil trials toward resolution faster than the traditional system, judge says.

Expanding a pilot project and a reputation for innovation, San Diego Superior Court judges have voted to adopt a system that assigns a civil case to one judge for the duration of the case, the court’s presiding judge said Thursday.

The system, which the court’s 70 judges approved Wednesday, will replace the traditional system of rotating a case around various courtrooms until trial, said Judge Judith McConnell, the presiding judge. All civil cases filed after July 1, 1991, will become part of the plan, she said.

An eight-judge experiment, in place since January, showed that assigning the case to a sole judge who becomes intimately familiar with it sweeps the case toward resolution much faster than the traditional system, McConnell said.

From that pilot project, “we know that, with one judge, there’s going to be a better quality of justice because the judge becomes familiar with the case, there’s less game-playing and much more consistency,” McConnell said.

The judges’ action means the San Diego court will become the first superior court in the state to use only the one-judge plan--formally called “independent calendaring”--for all civil cases, McConnell said.

The San Diego Superior Court was also the first in California to institute the so-called “fast-track” program, a controversial case management plan that since has been adopted around the state.

Adopted in San Diego in 1987, the fast-track plan speedily pushes civil cases toward trial by programming fixed dates that lawyers must meet, instead of agreeing among themselves to delay after delay, as cases proceed toward trial.

After three years of fast-track, the San Diego bench disposes of 63% of civil cases within one year and 95% within two years, most of them by settlement, McConnell said. The goal for implementing the one-judge plan is to boost the one-year rate to 90%, she said.

That’s not unreachable, she said, because the experiment with the one-judge plan shows that independent calendaring also moves cases through the court system faster.

For instance, among cases filed last April, about 23% of the cases in the one-judge plan had been set for trial by October, contrasted with 2% in the rotation system, which is known at the courthouse as master calendaring.

About 35% of those one-judge cases filed in April had been disposed of by October, she said. In the traditional rotation system, only 7% had been resolved, McConnell said.

“One of the biggest complaints citizens--and attorneys--have had about the way we handle our civil cases is that, every time they come to court, they get a different judge, and that there are endless delays,” McConnell said.

Judge Michael I. Greer, one of the eight judges in the experiment, said independent calendar judges have to “know the files from beginning to end because we’re responsible for the file. You don’t spend as much time playing games. You rule on (an issue) once, and it’s over with.”

Even the lawyers like the one-judge system because it promotes consistency, Greer said. “They love it because they know who the judge is,” he said. “They can count on it.”

Virginia Nelson, the current president of the San Diego County Bar Assn., said Thursday that the local bar has embraced the one-judge plan wholeheartedly and supports its extension to all civil cases.

McConnell said she would assign 18 of the court’s 70 judges to full-time civil work beginning July 1. Each judge can be expected to have 500 to 600 cases on the docket at any given time, she said.