Justice Delayed?
March 1, 2008
Author: Catherine M. Callery (Kate)| Louise M. Tarantino
SSA’s Office of Adjudication and Review (ODAR) is not the only bottle neck for Social Security appeals. As advocates know all too well, claimants can also wait inordinate amounts of time for decisions from the federal district courts. A recent article in Law.com confirms our suspicions about these delays. Data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts shows that as of March 2007, 13 judges had at least 100 civil cases pending for longer than three years, and 22 judges had 50-plus motions pending for six months or more. A handful had more than 100 motions and more than 200 cases pending.
The article acknowledged that there are many reasons why this backlog has developed. The judges have complained that these statistics do not distinguish between individual cases and complicated, multi-district class actions. One judge in Minnesota, for example, only had three motions pending in prior reports, but was then deluged by lawsuits following a train derailment in his district.
The lists of the “slowest” judges, including several from New York, by number of pending cases and pending motions, is available at http://www.law.com/jsp/LawArticlePC.jsp?id=1200650742999.
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