As cases change, new justice system emerges

Civil jury trials are following the path of the dinosaurs: They are becoming extinct.

And as they vanish, some lawyers worry that the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the guarantee of a trial by jury, may also disappear.

"It's all a matter of economics," Dale Hicks, president of the San Antonio chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, says.

The disappearing civil law trial phenomenon is not exclusive to state district courts or Texas. The same thing is happening in district and federal courts across the country — a trend that has become a hot topic in legal workshops and seminars throughout the nation.

Factors in the declining requests for jury trials include tort reform; arbitration clauses in contracts; changes in the law regarding workers' compensation; the growing use of mediation; and the rising cost of trials.

The drop in jury trials has produced a cottage industry of mediators and arbitrators while forcing a decline in the litigation sections of most large law firms.

The handful of cases that make it to civil court juries do so only after they have been ordered to mediation.

Rules for the local district court require that all cases try to mediate 45 days before the trial date. But while the courts can force the parties to hold a mediation conference, they cannot force them to settle.

Considering how malpractice litigation has priced health care out of the reach of everyone, I just can't manage to regret a decline in lawsuits.

Just yesterday, as I was using a ladder, my wife asked me if there wasn't one of those shelves to put paint on. There wasn't. "I guess somebody sued the ladder makers because there wasn't a sign saying "This is not a step." Then I noticed the endless warnings posted on ladder. Naturally, the cost of the ladder included all these unnecessary warnings.

Then there are the telephone booths. Ever wonder why they're out in the open, no longer little enclosed cubicles with doors? I think about that especially when it's raining or terribly cold.

I take my pets to a veterinary clinic that's the best I've ever seen, and I've seen plenty of them. It's run more efficiently, and the veterinarians and staff are much more forthcoming than any physicians' office I've ever visited. I also notice that the fear of litigation, that pervades all physicians' offices and dominates everything they do, is not found in veterinarians' offices, for obvious reasons. It would not be possible for physicians to operate a human health care clinic as efficiently and as well as the animal health care clinic I take my pets to.

And then there's the cost of air line tickets...

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