![]() The September 2020 report has yet to be published, but I would expect the number of pending motions on the list to increase due to the pandemic, which has only added to backlogs in courts. See, Director of the Administrative Office of the United States, March 2020 Civil Justice Reform Act, U.S. District Court judges and magistrate judges. As of March 31, 2020, there were 4,555 motions pending in front of U.S. ![]() The list is updated and published twice a year. When federal district court judges have been sitting on a motion for more than six months, or when a case is older than three years, those motions and cases are added to a public list commonly known as the Six-Month List. In this column, I offer some suggestions for what to do when you share a similar predicament. Whatever the reason behind the judge’s decision, this anecdote highlights one of the issues with the absence of a set procedure to follow when a judge has not ruled on a dispositive motion: attorneys often feel guilty (if not uncomfortable) contacting judges to nudge them on their case, yet inaction is problematic as well. Perhaps, that is advice I will not heed in the future. The judge granted about 90% of the motion and effectively skinned my case. Within a few weeks, I received my long-awaited decision on the motion. When I expressed my frustrations to a federal court judge from the Eastern District (who was unrelated to the case), he suggested that I write a letter to the chief judge explaining my situation. For example, while representing the plaintiff in a case in federal court several years ago, a judge had not ruled on a motion to dismiss (and the case stayed) for about a year. This is a particularly hot-button issue at the moment, but it is one that already was a concern before the pandemic. At a recent Federal Courts Committee discussion through the Philadelphia Bar Association, concerns were raised about what to do (or, more accurately, whether anything can be done) when federal court judges do not move a case for an extended (and unreasonably long) period, usually due to a pending motion to dismiss. We all know the phrase “justice delayed is justice denied.” Recently, I have been involved in a flurry of discussions with colleagues from the Philadelphia Bar Association relating to this issue. Kang, managing member of Kang Haggerty wrote “ The Dilemma of Lengthy ‘Motion Pending’ Delays in Federal Courts.” ![]() In the Maedition of The Legal Intelligencer Edward T.
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