Over-Listing Courts: Kicking the Can Down the Road

It is well known that airlines deliberately overbook flights, in the expectation that some passengers will fail to check in.

The same happens in the judicial system, with courts deliberately over-listed in the expectation that some cases will not materialise. In my area this is a particular problem with courts listed to deal with trials and youth work.

Take for example a trials court, which would normally have at least four trials listed for a morning session and three trials listed for an afternoon session. With each trial taking at least an hour, there simply are not enough hours in the day to deal with all seven trials.

However, in reality what tends to happen is that half of the trials won't go ahead for one reason or another. Perhaps the defendant is ill, perhaps one of the key witnesses fails to appear, perhaps there is a last minute change of plea.

Occasionally, by some strange alignment of the stars, a situation arises where all (or most) of the listed trials are ready to proceed to their full hearings.

This is not a good situation, because it means some of those trials need to be adjourned until a later date. This means defendants, (alleged) victims, witnesses and advocates having a wasted journey.

It sets a terrible first impression to anyone setting foot in the court building for the first time, particularly if they've spent weeks worrying about the trial process. Witnesses who have attended in good faith might not be so willing to return on a second occasion.

So what is the solution? In times gone by the court used to list case management hearings to double-check everything was on-track for an effective trial. Those hearings tend not to happen anymore, but there is still a need for effective dialogue between the parties and the court.

Problems need to be identified before the day of trial, so that last minute adjournments are avoided as best as possible. Particular care needs to be taken with trials involving multiple witnesses, with the prosecution or defence confirming their attendance a couple of days beforehand.

There will always be situations where a trial does not proceed as expected, but that should cause minimal inconvenience to all concerned.