Statewide System Forces Local Courts to Speed Up : Jurisprudence: The fast-track program seeks to resolve 90% of the civil cases that fall under its guidelines within a year.

Sixteen months ago, a big-rig truck jackknifed on the Simi Valley Freeway, triggering a crash that fatally injured 42-year-old Weldon Waits of Ventura.

A month later, Mary Waits, the victim’s widow, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in Ventura County Superior Court.

Under a new statewide program to speed up handling of civil cases, the lawsuit zipped through the judicial system and landed in a courtroom last month. Three weeks ago, a jury awarded $1.1 million in damages to the widow and her two adult daughters.

Such matters used to languish in the Ventura County courts for up to five years.

But with the newly created “fast-track system,” civil cases make it to court with speed never before seen in California courts.

The new program is part of the Trial Court Delay Reduction Act, which was passed by the state Legislature three years ago to cut court backlogs.

Under the new system, court personnel use computers to keep better tabs on cases and make sure attorneys adhere to strict deadlines for the various steps it takes to get a case to trial.

Begun July 1, 1992, fast track seeks to resolve 90% of the cases that fall under its guidelines within a year. The other 10% of cases, many of which involve multiple litigants or complex issues of law, are targeted for resolution within two years.

Fast track’s greatest accomplishment, court officials say, is that it has improved the way attorneys practice law in civil cases.

In the past, under the Code of Civil Procedure, lawyers had great leeway in the amount of time they could spend on a case. The courts weren’t required to dispose of cases for up to five years.

Now that most cases have a one-year time limit, attorneys have to think differently.

“When you take cases now, you make sure you can move them along,” said Jeanne Caughell, the court deputy executive officer in charge of civil cases in Ventura County.

The new system has also forced defendants’ attorneys to be prepared to defend their cases sooner.

“They must pay particular attention to the case from the outset, and they know the court is going to be checking on it,” observed Superior Court Judge Richard D. Aldrich, who supervised implementation of fast track in Ventura County.

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Fast track--which has led Ventura County Superior Court to nearly double the cases it resolves within a year, from 42% to 80%--has received lavish praise from plaintiffs such as Mary Waits.

Waits sued the driver of the rig that plowed into her husband’s vehicle, the trucking company and the state of California. The state owned the highway shoulder, which the jury determined was overly steep and narrow and left no room for Weldon Waits to swerve to avoid the collision.

“When they make families wait four or five years, it’s like they’re saying the system is too busy,” said Waits, 46. “I think this way is best.”

Even trial attorneys, who roundly criticized the program when it was conceived, now laud its virtues.

Ventura attorney John H. Howard, who tried the Waits case, said the widow and other plaintiffs who filed lawsuits in the first few months after fast track was implemented would not have had their matters disposed of so quickly under the old system of processing cases.

“I can tell you flat out that that case would not have gone to trial as quickly as it did if it weren’t for fast track,” Howard said.

He said defendants--often large corporations--used the old system to their advantage. Because they generally had more wherewithal, Howard said, those being sued would draw out the legal process by filing various court motions.

It was a way to force plaintiffs to settle for less than they deserved, he said.

“But under fast track, there are time limits for everything, which makes it difficult for people who want to avoid trials,” Howard said.

Dragging out cases is more difficult under fast track because court officials force litigants to keep the process moving as soon as the complaint is filed with the clerk’s office.

“That’s like the firing of the gun,” Caughell said.

Caughell said the court tracks three important dates in a civil case.

Seventy days after an action is filed, the court makes sure the plaintiff has served the defendant with a copy of the complaint. Under the old system, the plaintiff had three years to serve the defendant.

Three and a half months after the filing, the defendant must answer the complaint, which is usually a simple denial of culpability.

The third crucial date occurs five months after the filing. The parties on both sides are required to meet and lay out their stands on the case. For example, the plaintiff would give a settlement demand and the defendant would give a counteroffer, if any.

Court officials believe these conferences are productive because they force the two sides to confer.

“We feel the more parties sit down face-to-face, the better chance we have for a settlement,” Caughell said.

In the program’s first month, 259 fast-track cases poured into Ventura County’s Superior Court. All but 50 of them, or 19.4%, had been adjudicated within a year, said Carol Knopf, the county’s fast-track coordinator and a Superior Court judge pro tem.

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“I haven’t seen any decline in the rate of disposition” since then, she said. “If anything, we’re doing as well if not better, because attorneys are now getting into the fast-track thinking.”

She said attorneys no longer delay the pretrial investigations and interviews that once were used to draw out cases.

“I think there is less gamesmanship,” Knopf said.

Still, some say the new system has flaws that affect litigants, court personnel and attorneys.

Fast track has hurt some potential plaintiffs because time-short lawyers are turning more cases away.

Attorney Howard, for instance, said he rejected some cases that he perceived to have merit because he didn’t know if he could devote the proper time to them.

And he questioned whether being turned away caused those people to abandon the idea of justice altogether.

“I’m afraid that some people might not get another attorney,” lamented Howard, a past president of the Ventura County Trial Lawyers Assn.

As for the judges and other court personnel, Judge Aldrich said they have had to work overtime to keep up with the rush of cases that have to be dealt with right away.

Keeping tabs on all the new time limits is “a very time-consuming process,” Aldrich said. The result, he said, has had some judges “putting in 10-, 11-hour days, or more.”

Dennis LaRochelle, president of the Ventura County Bar Assn., said fast track has meant a new wave of headaches for attorneys.

The many changes make it difficult for them to complete discovery and other legal procedures on time, he said, especially in difficult cases.

As a result, LaRochelle said, some lawyers don’t file cases as soon as they get them.

“It used to be to your advantage to file early,” he said. “Now, you wait for almost a year, then file.”

All in all, however, the drawbacks pale in comparison to the advantages, LaRochelle and the others said.

That is especially true for one group, they said. “Overall,” observed LaRochelle, “fast track is better for the plaintiff.”

Mary Waits certainly agreed with that assessment.

Waits had met her husband 30 years ago, when they both attended Ventura High School. They were married two years later when she was 18.

“He was my best friend,” she said. “He was my high-school sweetheart.”

She said none of the defendants in the crash ever apologized or sent a sympathy card or flowers. She felt they ignored her pain and suffering.

“But when the court system stepped in right away and said, ‘Look at what you did to this family,’ you can’t ignore it,” Waits said.