How do some legal cases get acted on so quickly while others wait and wait?

Factual Questions
1

I am a total layman, and something about the (American) legal process has me a little puzzled.

Every now and then I will hear on the news about some brewing dispute with a looming deadline attached. Party A says, “I will do something by date X (usually a few days away).” Party B – often, but not always, the government – says, “No you won’t!”

One of the two parties then goes to court to enforce their will with a legal judgement. The case somehow then gets heard and decided in just a few days!

Meanwhile, I will hear about other cases that take years to go to trial, some, IIRC, where the decision is largely moot because some relevant deadline has long since passed (that is, some person has died, the landmark building fell down, the rally date has passed, etc.). Thus party B essentially wins the case, regardless of the actual verdict, because the legal system was too slow to respond to Party A’s argument.

There is currently a fast-track case like this happening here in NYC right now. A street fair group intends to throw a grafitti block party this weekend, inviting famous taggers to spray-paint mock subway cars. The city has revoked their street fair permit, claiming the activity will encourage crime. The case will be heard in a day or two. A similar fast-track case happened here just before the RNC convention when protesters wanted to rally in Central Park and the city refused to let them do it there.

Now, I realize that these are relatively high-profile examples involving First Ammendment issues. But would I, Joe Nobody, who hires some shlub lawyer, Jane Nobody, Esq., get the same consideration in the halls of justice? When Jane runs into the courthouse trying to stop some impending injustice against me, will she get laughed at by the clerk or the chief judge or whoever when he sees that she is not some ACLU bigshot trailed by a pack of news reporters? Or will she be told, “You are right. This case must be heard now! Right this way.”

How does that mechanism work and who controls it?

2

Normally, a legal case takes at a very minimum several months to go from commencement to judgment, and the process can often take several (to many) years. The Anglo-American legal system recognizes that since litigation proceeds slowly, the rights of the parties can sometimes be defeated merely due to the delay. Because of this, there are a number of legal remedies that a court can remedies during the pendency of a case to protect the rights of the parties, generally known as “preliminary relief” or “interim relief”.

The most flexible and powerful of these is known as the preliminary injunction [PI](with its cousin, the temporary restraining order [TRO]). The idea of a PI is to preserve the status quo and/or the subject of the litigation for the time that it will take for the case to be decided. Normally, a judge will issue a PI after a hearing where both sides have the chance to present legal arguments over whether the PI is necessary and appropriate. A judge can issue a TRO without hearing from the opposition, but the TRO will only last until the PI hearing can occur. The PI hearing will be decided on the evidence presented to the judge, and as full a review of the law as the judge is able to make in the circumstances. If there is a change in circumstances, better evidence, or better legal explication, the judge may change the ruling.

In any event, where necessary a judge can schedule a preliminary relief hearing on extremely short notice. Normally, a judge will only schedule this if there is pressing urgency, but situations like this are fairly common.

In cases where the issue is something like a parade permit, the preliminary injunction hearing will effectively decide the matter. However, whatever the decision on the PI, there may later proceedings on the issue of damages or other matters. For instance, even if the judge denies a PI compelling the City to grant a parade permit, the promoter of the parade may continue to litigate to establish the right to get a permit in the future, and to obtain money damages if the court finds that the permit was wrongly denied.

It is quite common for an average lawyer to obtain preliminary relief. For instance, recently I had a case where my client’s business partners decided (without his knowledge) that they would hold an auction to sell the business equipment. When my client found out about the auction the day before it was to occur, within the course of an afternoon, I prepared papers, went down to court, and obtained a TRO stopping the auction and scheduling a hearing for the next day. At the hearing the next day, the judge entered a PI enjoining the auction pending the hearing of evidence on the parties’ business relationships in a week or so. After another hearing where the PI was left in place, the parties came to a settlement.

3

The basic structure of the common law process is the trial. There’s a lengthy process leading up to trial. One party issues a statement of claim, the other files a defence. Then they have to disclose all relevant documents. Then they have pre-trial examinations (called depositions, or discovery) of each party and in some cases, potential witnesses. Then there may be pre-trial settlement procedures, or mediation. Eventually, the case may go to trial, but each of these steps can take a long time.

However, some issues need resolution right away - if a party were forced to wait for the trial process to run, the decision may come too late to do any good. So there are other procedures, called interlocutory proceedings, to allow for interim relief. Those procedures, which often involve a request for an injunction to stop certain conduct, are typically decided by a judge alone, not a jury, and based on affidavit evidence, not oral testimony.

Both the examples you give would fit into this category. If the city had to wait for trial, that could come a couple of years after the graffitti contest was held. If the city truly has a case that allowing the contest could contribute to crime, then the harm will already have occurred.

As for who can start such proceedings, the answer is anyone. The rules of court provide for interlocutory relief and anyone who believes they have a case could file an application. However, the courts recognise that giving interlocutory relief without a full trial is an extraordinary step, so there are strict standards that the applicant must meet.

4

The standard in the federal courts for issuing a preliminary injunction is that the party seeking the injunction must be substantially likely to succeed on the merits (that is, after a full trial and briefing) and that he will suffer irrevocable harm if the injunction is not issued that will not be alleviated by whatever damage award he receives if he wins the case after trial. In practice, they’re granted much more commonly than this test would suggest.

–Cliffy

5

The one time I have ever had to participate in a court case shows that the timing is sometimes set by the law itself. In my case it was an election (I was a candidate who had the misfortune to come in second. The person who cam in third had to go through me to get into the run-off) and the election law specified a strict time limit. So I had the doubtful pleasure of attending a court hearing on a Saturday morning. I gathered from the lawyers present that this was fairly unusual. But we moved along and got through the case that day. I won, but lost the election in the run-off.

So in this case, the law specified no delaying tactics or extraneous motions.

6

I agree with Billdo and Cliffy. I have obtained dozens of TROs for client, some in less than a day or two. They’re considered an emergency, extraordinary remedy, because they do take priority over older cases. And while they’re available to anyone (it doesn’t need to be a high-profile case), they’re not cheap. That’s mainly because everything is so accelerated - in just a few days, you’re preparing and presenting pleadings to address the necessary facts and legal issues. In a normal case without a TRO motion, that process is spread out over a much longer time. Also, in a normal case, you don’t need to convince the judge that there’s an emergency, or that you meet the other prerequisites for a TRO.