Saturday, July 24, 2010

Too Expensive

I've heard it for years, but only recently have I come to understand it myself; litigation is too expensive. Way too expensive. Counter-productively expensive. Ruinously expensive. Inexcusably expensive. Unjustly expensive.

Attorneys and the judges who hear their cases should be paid for a valuable service, no more no less, but that is not what is happening now. Litigation has become expensive because, at bottom, everyone's trying to pass the buck, and to those to whom the buck is passed, each of them is out to make a buck.

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Saturday, July 3, 2010

KUDOS TO THE UTAH SUPREME COURT ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON THE RULES OF CIVIL PROCEDURE





For many years the Civil Rules Committee has been concerned with the increased expansion and cost of discovery and the impact of this on our civil justice system. Rule 1 states that the rules “shall be liberally construed to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action.” The discovery rules may have contributed to “just” results in the sense that they provide parties of sufficient means with the ability to discover all facts relevant to the litigation, but modern, expansive discovery has had a decidedly negative impact on the “speedy” and “inexpensive” resolution of civil disputes. Current civil discovery practice fosters one of the goals of Rule 1 at the expense of the other two.


Discovery has become the focus and the most expensive part of modern litigation. Discovery is viewed also as a primary contributor to delay.