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The Council for Court Excellence actively promotes practices designed to reduce civil case processing delays and improve overall civil case flow management.

CCE’s most recent work in this area is reported in Superior Court Success Story: Civil Case Reform in the District of Columbia (June 2002). This study looked at the civil case reforms implemented 10 years earlier by the DC Superior Court Civil Division and found:

• The civil case reforms implemented by the DC Superior Court in 1991 significantly reduced the time from case filing to disposition.
• The DC Superior Court continues to manage most types of civil cases, using the single case assignment system, promptly and efficiently.
• There is much greater case scheduling certainty than before the DC Superior Court implemented their reforms. Trials and other civil court proceedings are held on the date set, and when held over, are heard by the Court with a day or so of when initially calendared.
• Civil case processing delays have increased in automobile personal injury cases involving “low impact soft-tissue” (“LIST”) injuries, due to low early settlement rates.

CCE’s past work includes recommending a series of management improvements to the DC Superior Court’s Civil Division in 1989, including expanded use of alternative dispute resolution and amending the law to raise the small claims jurisdiction from $2,500 to $5,000. One of the most far-reaching recommendations of this report, however, was the adoption of the “single case assignment system,” where the same judge would actively manage an entire case, not just a specific phase of the case.

The 2001 civil case management review by CCE evolved from anecdotal concerns from civil practitioners that the D.C. Superior Court's highly successful civil delay reduction program, implemented in 1990, may need some refinement. Access Superior Court Success Story: Civil Case Reform in the District of Columbia.

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