What Happened When Interrogatories Were Eliminated? ELP (Economical Litigation Pilot Program) Revisited

• NCJ Number: 90416
• Journal: Judges' Journal Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Dated: (Summer 1982) Pages: 8-15,44-46
• Author(s): S Weller; J C Ruhnka; J A Martin
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 12 pages
• Grant Number(s): DAR-78-17831
• Sponsoring Agency: National Science Foundation
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article presents the results of a long-term evaluation of two high-volume Economic Litigation Programs (ELP) in California, whose primary innovation has been restrictions on pretrial discovery in medium-sized civil cases.

Abstract

The ELP procedure simplifies pleadings, limits pretrial motions, severely restricts available discovery techniques, and simplifies judge trials. Interrogatories are completely eliminated, and depositions of individuals who are not parties to actions are severely restricted. The ELP courts evaluated were the Los Angeles Municipal Court and the Los Angeles Superior Court, Southwest Division (Torrance Superior Court). On the positive side, the study found (1) a substantial reduction in overall case-processing time in the Torrance Superior Court; (2) a reduction in the size of variation in case-processing time in both courts; (3) a reduction in time between the filing of the complaint and notification of trial readiness in the Los Angeles Municipal Court; and (4) some reduction in attorney preparation time, costs charged to litigants, and fees charged to litigants in hourly rate cases. On the negative side, it was found that the ELP time savings produced no reduction in contingent fee arrangements, although this cannot be blamed on the ELP. More importantly, attorneys perceived a lower quality of justice under the ELP, mainly due to the effects that the lack of discovery had on their ability to represent defendants. Lessons learned were that (1) some justice is necessary if justice is to be equally available to both sides of disputes, (2) adding steps to a process in the interests of simplification is likely to be counterproductive, (3) change requires education, and (4) widely used contingent-fee arrangements will prevent any direct relationship between attorney time required on a case and resulting legal fees. Tabular data and four footnotes are provided.