Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 29, 1995 TAG: 9503290093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
Take the case of Ronald Duck, for example. He was shot by a police officer on June 2 and filed suit July 28. A jury returned a verdict Thursday, eight months after the suit was filed.
Lawyers call it ``the rocket-docket.''
``You frequently hear about clogged court dockets and how long it takes for cases to come to trial,'' U.S. Magistrate William T. Prince told jurors in the Duck case. ``We are not, in Virginia, guilty of slow litigation. There is no better example of that than this case.''
Actually, the Duck case was slower than average for Norfolk's federal court. Most cases here go to trial within five months - three times faster than the national average.
``Your case needs to be ready practically from the time you file it,'' said Jeremiah A. Denton III, who represented Duck.
From the day a lawsuit is filed in Norfolk's U.S. District Court, the clock is ticking. The defendant gets three weeks to file a reply. A few weeks later, both sides meet with a judge to set a trial date. It must be no more than six months away.
Counting backward from the trial date, other deadlines are set: final pretrial conference, discovery cutoffs, expert witness designations. Once set, the schedule is rarely changed.
``The trial date, if not set in concrete, is set in something that's hardening quick,'' Prince said. ``Sometimes out-of-state attorneys are surprised to find the trial date has meaning.''
Such dead-on certainty has its advantages.
In the 1970s and '80s, lawyer Richard S. Glasser filed asbestos lawsuits by the box-load. All over America, lawyers were clogging federal courts with thousands of asbestos claims.
Many courthouses were overwhelmed. But in Norfolk, judges tried 15 cases every two weeks - no excuses. That forced both sides to settle or face a fast trial. Hundreds of cases zipped through the system.
``The Eastern District of Virginia, I truly think, was the envy of every plaintiff's lawyer in the country who was working in asbestos litigation,'' Glasser said.
``I am a very strong proponent of the rocket-docket. It has helped us to advance the cause of our asbestos clients better than any jurisdiction in the country. If there's a disadvantage, it was a very heavy workload for attorneys on both sides, the staffs - Saturdays and Sundays, very little rest. That went on for months.''
But the result was significant: Only two states in the country had judgments against the Manville Corp., the biggest asbestos manufacturer, before the company started a legal action to consolidate claims.
Texas had one. Virginia had 1,088.
So fast is Norfolk's federal court that when the rest of the country adopted new rules to speed up cases in December 1993, the judges of eastern Virginia opted out.
``For us to have followed those new rules would have slowed us down,'' Prince said.
by CNB