Pattern discovery is just one of a number of recommendations issued by the Commission that are designed to increase fairness and efficiencies in Missouri civil courts, according to co-chairs of the Missouri Commission on Civil Justice Reform.
Judge Gary Witt and Chief Judge Cynthia Martin, both appellate justices at the Western Division Court of Appeals, co-chair the Commission.
“We want to get a result that is going to help practitioners and litigants,” Witt said. “People coming before the courts deserve to get an answer and we're hoping to streamline that and make it easier and less expensive for the people who are the users of the court system.”
Judge Witt
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As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, pattern discovery is one way to reduce the cost and delay of litigation in Missouri, focus the issues in a case early on, and to be more clear about what information is to be shared by both sides.
“We're also looking at issues involving the use of discovery in associate division cases in particular where there are some belief or concerns that certain discovery is very difficult, particularly for self-represented litigants to know how to handle,” Martin said. “The penalty for failing to respond can be very acute.”
The Commission was created by the Missouri Supreme Court after it issued an order on June 28, 2017, charging it with improving how the courts serve citizens in terms of efficiency, cost, and convenience.
“One of the recommendations we've made to the Missouri Supreme Court is the creation of a new standing committee that would be devoted to continued oversight and proactive assessment of how things could be improved in practice in the associate division and small claims court,” Martin said. “We've also made recommendations for more than a handful of discrete rule changes, all of which have been adopted that are designed to create fairness in small ways but that can have a big impact.”
Family, juvenile, probate, and post-conviction matters are excluded, according to the June 28, 2017, Missouri Supreme Court order.
"My sense is that it is because the Commission was formed largely in response to the National Center for State Courts' initiative addressing civil justice reform, which had resulted in the issuance of 13 recommendations that are geared more toward fundamental routine civil actions, in an effort to make recommendations about the efficiency of resolution of those claims using our civil court's system," Martin said.
Recommendations that emerge from the Commission are subject to approval by the Missouri Supreme Court or the legislature.
“There are always people that will object because we all get used to doing things a certain way and change is hard,” Witt said. “What the Commission has going is the makeup is almost equally divided among each side of the issues. The lawyers and people that are involved in the commission are people who are leaders in the area they practice in and so if they are willing to sign off on it, then there's more likely to be buy-in by general practitioners in those areas.”
When COVID-19 emerged in mid-March, most jury trials were put on hold throughout the state, according to Witt, and while immunizations are expected to eliminate the ban eventually, some uses of remote appearances and hearings are likely to be permanent.
“There will definitely be a change in practice that incorporates more remote appearances and witness appearances but we're not working on our own,” Martin said. “We are working with groups or committees that are also interested in improving efficiencies in the court system.”
One of the working groups that the Commission is collaborating with combines the Missouri Court Automation Committee and the State Judicial Records Committee.
“That working group is charged with looking at the development of best practices for any and all issues involving remote appearances in every kind of case, not just civil cases,” Martin said. “We, the Commission on Civil Justice Reform, are working directly with that working group because a sub-part of its work implicates the Civil Justice Reform Commission's work and we do think that there are ways that on-going remote access and remote appearances can create more efficiencies."