THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503270031
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 122 lines
Justice doesn't get much swifter.
On June 2, a police officer shot Ronald Duck.
On July 28, Duck sued the officer.
On Thursday - eight months after the lawsuit was filed - the jury returned a verdict.
ZING! Faster than you can say judicial backlog, Norfolk's federal judges had dispatched another case.
Lawyers around town have a phrase for this: They call it the rocket-docket. While other courts let cases crawl to conclusion, judges here put them on a legal speedway.
In fact, the federal courts of Eastern Virginia - Norfolk, Newport News, Richmond and Alexandria - are the second-fastest in America, among 94 federal judicial districts.
Only an obscure one-judge court in Oklahoma is faster.
``You frequently hear about clogged court dockets and how long it takes for cases to come to trial,'' U.S. Magistrate Judge 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, fast as it was, the Duck case was slower than average for Norfolk's federal court. Most cases here go to trial within five months of the filing of a lawsuit and its response.
Indeed, Norfolk's federal court is not just fast - it is three times faster on civil cases than the average federal court.
Lawyers know that going in, and they are prepared.
``Your case needs to be ready practically from the time you file it,'' says Jeremiah A. Denton III, who represented Duck.
There are advantages. It is cheaper to try a case fast. Justice delayed is expensive. Lawyer fees and deposition bills pile up. Also, quick trials mean fresher memories for witnesses.
State courts try to compete, but can't.
``The state court can be as fast, if both sides want it to be,'' says lawyer Alan B. Rashkind, who defended the police officer in the Duck case. ``The difference is: In federal court, whether you want it or not, you'll get it.''
That's because Norfolk's federal judges do not suffer delays gladly.
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. Woe be to the lawyer who offers a lame excuse for a continuance.
``The trial date, if not set in concrete, is set in something that's hardening quick,'' Prince says. ``Sometimes out-of-state attorneys are surprised to find the trial date has meaning. Maybe they come from someplace where the trial date is symbolic.''
Such dead-on certainty has its advantages.
Richard S. Glasser is the dean of local asbestos lawyers. He has spent more time in Norfolk's federal court than perhaps any other lawyer in town.
In the 1970s and '80s, Glasser filed asbestos lawsuits by the boxload. It was not uncommon. All over America, lawyers were clogging federal courts with thousands of asbestos claims.
Many courthouses were overwhelmed. Not Norfolk's.
Here, judges responded with aggression. About 1985, they forced the issue by scheduling for trial 15 cases at a time - to be tried on the same day, 15 cases every two weeks, no excuses.
That forced both sides to settle up or face a fast trial. Hundreds of cases zipped through the system.
And word spread.
``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 says. ``The name of the rocket-docket was known by the courts with which we dealt, certainly the attorneys . . . .
``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,'' Prince says, ``would have slowed us down.''
Judge Walter E. Hoffman, the father of the rocket-docket, once explained how the system came to be.
``When I took over in 1954, there were about 1,300 cases that were pending,'' he told a reporter in 1988. ``I was concerned. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work on various committees headed by Judge Alfred P. Murrah, who was the chief judge of the 10th Circuit. He was from Oklahoma City. . . .
``Judge Murrah was a man devoted to the proper administration of justice and trying to expedite cases through trial. In 1962, I adopted some of the suggestions that I had learned from Judge Murrah. . . . I really didn't get any genuine relief on the docket until 1967, when two additional judges joined me here." ILLUSTRATION: HOW FAST ARE THE FEDERAL COURTS?
Civil* National rank** Criminal*** National rank**
Eastern Va.
(8 judges) 5 months 2 4.0 months 8
Western Va.
(4 judges) 9 months 5 7.6 months 72
Eastern N.C.
(4 judges) 13 months 23 6.6 months 52
National
avg. 16 months 6.3 months
SOURCE: Federal Court Management Statistics, 1993.
* Median time from filing of answer or response to start of trial.
** Among 94 federal judicial districts.
*** Median time for felonies, from filing to disposition.
KEYWORDS: FEDERAL COURT by CNB