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Law360 (May 1, 2020, 6:30 PM EDT ) A day after the Philadelphia County courts announced plans for a limited restart to civil litigation that was frozen in mid-March as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the local bar association pressed Friday for the adoption of new technology to further allow cases to begin moving forward.
In a statement from Chancellor A. Michael Snyder on Friday, the Philadelphia Bar Association praised court leadership for its plans to once again begin moving ahead with settlement conferences that had been postponed as a result of the novel coronavirus but said more needed to be done to get litigation back on track and prevent backlogs.
"It is critical that the system not become backlogged so significantly that recovery becomes drawn out," Snyder said. "We must each remember that justice delayed is justice denied."
The statement pointed, in particular, to the need for judges to begin deciding motions for extraordinary relief, discovery matters and various other filings.
"We urge the court to expeditiously adopt temporary changes in practice in civil matters which will allow these matters to be heard and decided without delay," Snyder said, adding that he believed many hearings could be handled remotely.
"We stand ready to assist the court in implementing the required procedural changes so that the civil justice system in Philadelphia can remain the vibrant entity that it has been," he added.
Trial courts across Pennsylvania are slowly getting back into gear after the state's Supreme Court declared a judicial emergency in mid-March largely closing county-level courthouses with certain exceptions for essential functions.
On Tuesday, however, the justices inked a new order asking county-level president judges to start restoring a broader range of operations with a new emphasis on video conferencing and other technology in order to limit in-person access to physical courthouses.
Criminal and civil jury trials, meanwhile, will remain suspended until an unspecified future date under the Supreme Court's order.
Even as the high court stressed the need to get cases moving again, the order issued Tuesday extended the statewide judicial emergency through May in order to allow individual county courts to respond to local conditions with regard to the extent of the outbreak.
According to the state's Department of Health, southeastern Pennsylvania remains a hotspot for the virus when compared with certain other regions where Gov. Tom Wolf has started to ease stay-at-home orders.
In the days after the Supreme Court's order on Tuesday, the Philadelphia County courts issued a notice that settlement conferences that had been postponed as a result of the coronavirus would be relisted before a judge with the ability to conduct audio and video conferencing.
The court also said that case management conferences that had been scheduled between mid-March and the beginning of June would be waived, and that court staffers would instead be reviewing civil docket records on their own and issuing case management orders.
A spokesman for the court did not immediately return a message seeking comment Friday.
--Editing by Alyssa Miller.
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