Case Management Reform

A PRESENTATION ON

CASE MANAGEMENT REFORM:

THE PHILIPPINE EXPERIENCE

(Delivered at the APJRF Singapore Roundtable Discussion on the Handbook on Judicial Reforms in the Asia-Pacific Region, January 19 – 21, 2009)

BY: ZENAIDA N. ELEPANO

Retired Court Administrator,

Consultant for Judicial Reforms

and Faculty Member, Philippine

Judicial Academy

Supreme Court of the Philippines

The twin problems of case delay and docket congestion have been identified as the most common causes for the failure of courts to effectively administer and deliver justice that is inexpensive, fair and expeditious. To confront this problem that has perennially plagued courts for several decades now, the Supreme Court of the Philippinesin 2003 embarked on a case management project that challengedjudges and their personnel to perform a more activist-interventionist role in the management of cases filed before their courts.

Inspired by the American Bar Association’s Standard on Delay Reduction (it states that “ From the commencement of litigation to its resolution, whether by trial or settlement, any elapsed time other than reasonably requiredfor pleadings, discovery and case events, is unacceptable and should be eliminated. x x x”) the project adopteda case-processing method called effective caseflow management (CFM) using a scheme called Differentiated Case Management (DCM).

Prior to the implementation of the project, court performance and case disposals in Philippine trial courts was dismal, to say the least. The second level courts possessed unmanageable monthly caseloads of 346 cases on the average per court. This would roughly translate into 14 to 15 cases per calendar day!Due to time constraints, cases that could not be heard for that day would necessarily have to be postponed to another date, thus creating a horrible backlog in the end. In 2001, the average case inflow (case filings) was 231 per month while the average case outflow (disposals by trial, negotiated settlement or case dismissal) numbered 214, or 17 cases less than those that entered the court. This situation occurring every month over the succeeding years definitely accounted for bloated court dockets.

The disposal performance of our first level courts was no different. From 2000 to 2002, the 95 first level courts in MetroManila had a total case inflow of82,104added to their pending caseloads. The total disposal in three years was82,875 cases, showing that the number of disposedcases not only equalled the number filedbut even exceeded it by 771! While this looks encouraging, this however is deceptive because it does not take into account the number of casespending at the start of the 3-year period. What this actually shows is that the 771 disposals actuallyinvolved cases pending with the courts before 2000. This meansa reduction of the pre-year 2000 pending cases by a minuscule amount of only8 cases per court over three years!

To implement our case management projectour Supreme Courtselected a project site and created a Committee to design the Case Management Plan and implement it. A CFM Handbook was prepared describing step by step the CFM process for both criminal and civil cases. Using American and Canadian models on Caseflow and Differentiated Case Management, Tracking Systems were formulated by collapsing time frames for case events into reasonably short periods to shorten case life and prevent or minimize delay. Simple cases would be assigned to Fast Track to be disposed of in six months or less; cases that demanded utmost judicial attention were shunted to the Complex Track with a disposal time oftwo years; and a Standard track was configured to capturecases that were neither simple or complex, the case lifeof which would be one year. To facilitate monitoring of the progress of the case from one caseevent to the next, technology had to be used. Thus a CFM software program based on the CFM process and tracking systems was developed and set in place. The technology was provided by USAID.

As implemented, the most satisfying outcome of this reform initiative was its affirmationthat case management through the use of CFM/DCM techniques works and is effective in reducing delay in the disposition of cases. But this is so only if the court is genuinely committed to ensure that all the events or stages of a case are observed within the designated time frames.

The project also showed specifically that with CFM methods, the disposal of cases increased sharply (3,600 in the RTC in the first 6 months of the project in 2003, compared to 2750 for the whole year of 2002) despite an upsurge of filings at the start of the project. In the first level courts 95% of their civil cases and 90% of their criminal cases were disposed of according to their CFM timeframes!

The project resulted in a heightened level of awareness of judges, court personnel, lawyers and the public on the importance and necessity of reducing or eliminating delay through CFM and other case management tools.

As an experimental endeavour, the case management project encountered challengesof varying magnitudes.

First of all, as the project got underway, a growing resistance by key players to the changes being implemented developed. This was not helped any by a traditional court environment where the pace of litigation was dictated by lawyers and their clients. Several judges and court personnel became allergic to the idea of meeting shorter deadlines and observing new timeframes and schedules because this process upsetestablishedpatterns of their professional and personal lifestyles.

Second of all, unforeseen vacanciesin some courts occurred and the temporary replacements suffered “culture shock, being plunged into the project about which they had no specific knowledge and training, especially in the use and operation of the technology. Needless to say, thisderailed the CFM experiment in theirrespective courts.

Third of all, the technology that was initially developed was not only difficult to maintain, it suffered innumerable glitches. It wasalso deficient in the sense that the users (judges, branch clerks and encoders) found a lot of ways to circumvent the electronic tracking process, especially when their cases went off-track. This, verily, undermined the purpose of the project. Compounding the problem was the prevailing computer illiteracy of several judges and court personnel who thought that technology was beyond their mortal understanding.

Fourth of all, the CFM softwareas developed existed as a “stand-alone” entity and could not be technologically linked with other existing internal support mechanisms of the Case Administration Information System (CAMIS)developed by the Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) to be the repository of case data and statistics. The CFM software with its flat file system proprietary to IBM could not communicate with CAMIS which was free, being an open-sourced program with a structured database, so that the pilot courts’ monthly case reports still had to be accomplished manually and delivered to OCA by mail or messenger.

All of these challengeshad to be confronted head-on, by short term or long term measures. Not a few of them are still being worked out up to the present! But the more important thing to note here is that these challengeswere eventually resolved into lessons learned.

What accounted for the successes in the implementation of our Project? Definitely, a confluence of several factors:

1. In the main, it was pure determination and hard work(adoggone stubbornness, as some judges bluntly put it), a kind of “stick-to-itiveness” to go with the Plan from start to finish, no matter what happened, no matter who fell along the way. The inspired leadership provided by judges and branch clerks of courtno doubt helped keep the morale up.

2. The formulation of a CFM Plan with its Tracking Systems, and the creation of a corresponding CFM software program that greatly facilitated the monitoring of the progress of cases from filing to disposition.

3. The external support of justice stakeholders such as the Philippine Bar, the community, and not the least of all, thedevelopment partners, particularly USAID and The Asia Foundation, which supplied the Project with the much needed training and technological assistance.

In conclusion, learning from the project has spurred us to roll out our case management system to other areas in the Philippines. With the strong leadership of our Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno and the continuing encouragement and wise counsel of Justice Antonio T. Carpio, erstwhile Chair of the Computerization Committee of the Supreme Court, the system continues to be enhanced with the addition of new features such as electronic payment of filing and other legal fees, electronic docketing and numbering of cases and electronic assignment or raffling of cases, aside from software reconfiguration that enables CFM to now talk with CAMIS, and the improvement of the mediation process as part of pre-trial.

Ours is not a perfect creation, far from it. But we are doing our darnedest best by not leaving anything to chance to make our case management systemwork, and work well.

Thank you for your kind attention, MABUHAY, and Good day to all!

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