NCJ Number
79067
Journal
Judges' Journal Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Dated: (Summer 1981) Pages: 36-45
Date Published
1981
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This article reports the results of an evaluation of the compulsory civil arbitration program in the Rochester City Court (New York).
Abstract
Begun in October 1970, the Rochester program includes all civil cases in the city court except evictions and small claims. With these exceptions, all civil cases with an upper jurisdictional limit of $6,000 now are scheduled for arbitration. In addition, supreme court (New York's general trial court) cases can be sent to abritration by stipulation of the parties. The evaluation focused on the goals of the arbitration program and the degree to which those goals have been achieved. The following criteria were selected as yardsticks by which the success of the program would be judged: (1) the ability of the arbitration program to dispose of cases and reduce the court's backlog; (2) the ability of the program to reduce delay, particularly delay to disposition once a case is ready for trial; (3) the efficiency of the program in terms of savings in attorney time and effort and attorney fees to litigants; and (4) the quality of justice dispensed by the program. To test the evaluation, a 'control' court (the Syracuse City Court, N.Y.) with a similar caseload but without the arbitration program was compared with the Rochester court. Data were collected from the case records of both courts, personal interviews WERE CONDUCTED with judges and court staff, and questionnaires WERE sent to about 300 attorneys whose names appeared in the Rochester arbitration files. The data show that the compulsory civil arbitration program in Rochester produced a substantial reduction in retrial settlements. However, total case processing time with arbitration remained high compared with Syracuse. Graphs, tables, and 11 footnotes are provided.