Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Saturday, August 26, 2006 1:03:38 AM
This last Spring, the Denver Post had an article describing how litigants were hiring retired judges and justices to make decisions in cases where the assigned judge would not make a decision and finalize the litigation.
One of the issues I brought to the attention of the retention commission was that my judge had failed to rule on a 2003 motion, and that, in May, 2005, I specifically reminded him that he had not ruled and told him the defense was using his failure to rule as a shield. He still did not rule, and in its January 2006 motion to reverse the default judgment, the defense admitted that it had been using the judges by then 28 month failure to rule as a rationale for withholding discovery.
In an earlier post, I described the judge's reluctance to rule on our motion for a default judgment. It took him more than three months to rule after the first 15 day time limit for the defense to answer ran out.
Of course, the retention commission thought that information too unimportant to bring to the public's attention because the judge was "an asset to the community."
I did not realize how epidemic this failure to make timely rulings was until I examined the judicial retention commission's statistics for all Colorado judges. On average, 20% of the attorneys who responded to a questionnaire about a judge, any judge, stated that the judge was slow to make decisions. For some, it was 40%!
Despite the fact that it is unethical (Canon 3(B)(1) states in part: "A judge should diligently discharge his or her administrative responsibilities..."), retention commissions across the state turned a blind eye to this performance.
This is a tax, and a heavy tax on litigants. I believe that 80% of my litigation expenses can be traced to either the judge's failure to make timely rulings or his failure to make any rulings at all. You will not hear the CBA complain or advocate change because this tax is paid directly to its members.
If the citizens of Colorado want Tort Reform, want to cut their litigation burden, the very most effective way is to take ethics rule making and enforcement away from the supreme court.