This month, the Baton Rouge Bar Association published an article in The Baton Rouge Lawyer providing an overview of the 19th Judicial District Court’s new Complex Litigation Section pilot program. In the article, found here, Presiding Judge Wilson E. Fields shares the details involved in the collaborative planning process for this innovative program. The National Center for State Courts estimates that approximately 4-5% of all civil matters filed in a state district court qualifies as “complex”. It this statistic holds true for the 19th JDC, then the CLS pilot could expect to see an average of 750 complex matters each year. This year, this number is being exceeded by the volume of hurricane related cases that have been filed in the 19th JDC. It is expected that the benefits of this program will be two-fold - improving the overall civil docket flow for the 19th JDC and improving the resolution time for complex cases.
Judge Wilson E. Fields, Presiding Judge Complex Litigation Section