BULLETINS FROM ALOHA

There are many things that make our daily life in the private practice of law more difficult than it has to be, yet we do nothing.  For example, at the last House of Delegates meeting, one of our members questioned why we need the 'true copy' stamp on pleadings any more.  We have an ability to control time requirements for the filing of things through our various professional organizations and the Oregon State Bar.  The Public Affairs Committee of the Board of Governors lobbies for legislative changes each year under the 'law improvements' rubric and there is the Council on Court Procedures located at Lewis and Clark Law School that should be receptive to our recommendations for uniformity and changes for the better.  If anybody can explain to me why the time to file an appeal to the Supreme Court of Oregon should be different than the time required for a Petition for Reconsideration to the same Court I would be happy to hear it. Otherwise, it is just one of those unnecessary time traps.   

The Professional Liability Fund publishes a tome entitled  Oregon Statutory Time Limitations  which identifies our minefield.  Each year about 200 PLF claims are filed related to time limitation claims and the PLF pays out over two million dollars each year on stupid lawyer mistakes pertaining to time issues that cause us pain and agony.  There are over one hundred separate stautory time limitations in Oregon.  I challenge any one of you to explain simply how soon a civil rights claimant must report a civil rights violation to the local state agency (BOLI) or the federal agency (EEOC) in order to preserve their 'rights', and the exceptions and tie-in between the two sets of rules.  AND WE ARE DOING THIS TO OURSELVES, NO BODY ELSE!  We have the ability to make all these time requirments mechanically simple  and we have the ability to make sense of whether an Uninsured Motorist Claim must be filed within the two year tort statute of limitations or the six year contract statute of limitations.  Yet we don't.  Our leadership cares more about their own personal career gratifications than helping the law grunt on the street.  That is the truth.

Here is how simple it could be.  On the local state litigation level make everything thirty days.  In the Uniform Trial Court Rules an Opposing Party must file a response to a motion within 14 days and a reply must be filed 7 days thereafter.  You have to file an appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court within 35 days.  Why not make all these ministerial  time requirements 30 days.  Every time issue that is simple could be 30 days, and to keep things moving most things would be governed by the thirty day rule.  Virtually every procedural filing could fall within this simple time requirement. There could be rare filings that call for a different time requirement, but those would be the few exceptions.  Yet we toil on.  My red PLF time requirement book is over two hundred pages long.  It should be twenty pages long at most.  Why do we do this to ourselves?