There are serious problems in the United States civil justice system and the discovery system, while not broken, is badly in need of attention.
That's according to the final report on civil litigation and discovery by the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (click here to see the full report and recommendations.)
"In many jurisdictions, today's system takes too long and costs too much," the report stated. "Some deserving cases are not brought because the cost of pursuing them fails a rational cost-benefit test while some other cases of questionable merit and smaller cases are settled rather than tried because it costs too much to litigate them."
The report criticized the current "one size fits all" approach to civil discovery, stating that the discovery rules need to be modified to limit discovery and make it more proportional to each case being litigated, wrote Mark S. Spring, a partner in the Sacramento office of Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger LLP, on the firm's California Labor & Employment Law Blog.
The report also noted that electronic discovery needs a serious overhaul.
In California, Assembly Bill 5 (Noreen Evans) would modernize the state's discovery law by addressing issues related to e-discovery. The bill, which CJAC supports, is the same as last year's AB 926, which was vetoed by the Governor. Assembly Bill 5 has passed the Assembly and is now in the Senate.