When Will Hawaii Courts Reopen?

This video features Wayne D. Parsons, a Medical Malpractice attorney based in Hawaii.

Honolulu Personal Injury Attorney Explains Legal Proceedings During COVID-19 Pandemic

Video Transcript:

Wayne Parsons:
The whole society is facing economic hardship and people that are hurt or facing even more economic hardship, and it's harder for them to go to the doctors.

Rob Rosenthal:

So how is the pandemic and quarantining going to affect your personal injury case in Hawaii? Well, that's what we're going to find out right now, because that's what we're going to ask the lawyer.

Hi again, everybody, I'm Rob Rosenthal with askthelawyers.com and my guest is Hawaii attorney Wayne Parsons. I want to remind you that if you have specific questions about your specific situation that you'd like to ask, just go to askthelawyers.com, click on the button at the top of the home page that says “Ask a Lawyer”, and it'll walk you right through what you do there.

Wayne, it's good to see you again. Thank you for making some time to answer our questions.

Wayne Parsons:

Aloha. It's good to be here.

Rob Rosenthal:

Thank you. Let's start off with what have the courts been like in Hawaii over the last year or so, with everything that's been going on?

Wayne Parsons:

Well, it's been slow. Everything slowed down. I'm in contact with lots of lawyers around the country, my friends, and involved in my cases, and everybody's experiencing a lot of the same thing. The courts shut down for anything in-person, and we couldn't do trials. So since March of last year, there have been almost no trials and the ones that we had have been virtual. So that's a big effect.

Rob Rosenthal:

Is it starting to open back up, or is there any sort of timeline when you might see something give there?

Wayne Parsons:

Our Chief Justice has been sending out weekly orders and amendments to the rules that allow things to get started, like discovery, which we do in cases where we take depositions and we exchange expert reports and we exchange documents. That started back a year ago; we started doing it all virtually. We learned how to do virtual depositions, but the courts could only entertain a motion or hearing, which was all virtual, and we would all get on a Zoom conference, but that allowed the cases to keep moving. The parties could do their investigations and discovery, depositions could be conducted remotely, and the case could be moved along, preparing it for a trial. A party could file a motion and say, “We want the case dismissed,” and a judge could look at that and make a decision. But as far as actually getting a case to trial, everything got put off, so the chief justice put out a notice that there will be no jury trials until sometime in 2021. That was put out last year. So that's the main thing. The courts have not been able to have trials, and I'm a civil lawyer, I do personal injury cases. But there are criminal cases too, and the criminal cases take priority, and the criminal cases have a right to a speedy trial, so a defendant charged with a crime can have his case dismissed or her case dismissed if the case has not been tried within a certain period of time; those dates have been extended and delayed, but when the courts open back up for trials, the criminal cases are going to take precedence. At the same time we have a shortage of judges in Hawaii. There were empty vacancies. The state is financially in hardship; they haven't been able to fill some of those vacancies, so we have a shortage of judges and we have criminal trials that have to go first, and so for our civil cases we're hoping that we can start seeing some cases tried in the personal injury area this summer and later this year.

Rob Rosenthal:

Sounds like it all boils down to a huge backlog though.

Wayne Parsons:

Huge backlogs. An anecdote for Hawaii, it's unique to Hawaii, but our police department enforced the social distancing, wearing masks, and quarantining rules very, very aggressively last year, and so by August of last year they had issued 60,000 citations to people, some local but many of them were people who would come here from the mainland who were violating the rules; 60,000, and they’re misdemeanor charges. You have a rate to jury trial for a misdemeanor. So the courts are facing a huge problem with things like that. I think they'll get it resolved, but it's kind of messy at the court level. The courts are under a great deal of strain right now.

Rob Rosenthal:

This all sounds very negative. Is there anything that's beneficial to say, clients or attorneys or judges or the courts or anything that could come out of all this?

Wayne Parsons:

Yes, there are some fantastic things happening. We have had to take depositions; that's where you examine a witness with a court reporter present prior to a trial. We used to have to fly to the mainland for that if we had witnesses on the mainland. Or our clients if they lived on the mainland and were hurt in Hawaii, had to get on an airplane and come to Hawaii. That all ended, and we learned how to do depositions by Zoom conferences, by webinars, over the internet. Everybody's at home or in their office, the witnesses at home are in their office. We set it all up and we learned how to do those depositions. That saves a huge amount of money. There might be five or six lawyers who have to fly to Chicago to do two or three depositions; that’s thousands and thousands of dollars and a great expense of time. We've learned that we don't need to do that. The depositions we take by Zoom conferences are fantastic; they're as good as any in-person deposition. Some lawyers will disagree with that, but the vast majority of us believe that this is the way that we should do it going forward. That's going to save a lot of money. That's going to save a lot of time. That's going to speed the resolution of cases. We hope, most of us and I think the judiciary too hope that those things don't change once the pandemic is over; to continue to do those things that save money, move cases faster and get us to the point where we can resolve the case sooner.

Rob Rosenthal:

What are your thoughts on whether there could ever be remote jury trials?

Wayne Parsons:

Well, a good friend of mine in California, her law firm had a completely remote jury trial last fall. It involved many witnesses. It was a hotly contested personal injury case, went on for a couple of weeks. Everybody was remote. I attended a conference where she reported on what happened, she felt it was fantastic. She thought it was, in some ways, superior to when you're all in the same room and you're all together. The idea that you couldn't get justice because the jury wouldn’t all be together—everybody was on video, everybody could be seen at any moment, and the handling of the evidence went just fine. So I think yes, I think we're going to be able to have virtual jury trials. There's a stronger sentiment by lawyers and some judges that they're not as good as virtual trials, and some lawyers are insisting that they have a courtroom with a jury and a standard trial. That's fine. That's what I do. We can accommodate that, but I do find it interesting. I think that we're going to have a much more efficient justice system after this is over, and I believe in other industries and professions also, they're finding this to be true. Like with doctor's appointments, some have to be in-person, surgeries have to be in-person, but there are a lot of things you can do virtually with a Zoom conference that are equally as good and don’t take nearly as much time.

Rob Rosenthal:

Have you found, Wayne, over the last year during the pandemic, fewer people on the road, fewer people in their cars, fewer people out to do anything. Have there been fewer cases? Are there fewer injuries or people getting hurt due to someone else's negligence?

Wayne Parsons:

That's one of the things that has happened, and it's a very good question. There aren't as many motor vehicle crashes. We have motor vehicle crashes; we had very serious injuries from them, but not as many people because we weren't driving as much. And people weren't shopping and going to stores and going out on commercial sites and walking around like they used to. So we've seen a reduction in the number of injuries that are coming into lawyers’ offices, lawyers like me. I also think that people are not in a mood to file lawsuits or bring claims. Everybody's dealing with a pandemic, people are afraid of becoming sick, and so I think there's been a sort of a lull in the cases in the last year.

Rob Rosenthal:

It seems like even during the best of times people often complain about how slowly the justice system works right now, maybe even more slowly. I guess the advice you would have for people is to be patient if they have a pending case, whether criminal or civil?

Wayne Parsons:

Well, I don't expect my clients to be patient; they have their hands full with injuries, some of them very disabling injuries. So the whole society is facing economic hardship, and people that are hurt or facing even more economic hardship, and it's harder for them to go to the doctors because of all the covid restrictions So it's okay with me if my clients are impatient, I probably would be too. But I'm impatient, and I think the whole legal profession. I commend our judiciary in Hawaii. I think we have an outstanding judiciary and our circuit judges and the district court judges and family court judges and supreme court, and our Chief Justice who's the CEO of this whole thing, I think they're doing a fantastic job of grappling with very difficult problems. Underfunding to the judiciary has really, really hurt because we don't have enough judges and cases are really, really important to people. Sometimes their future depends on the outcome of the case. Businesses can't move forward until they resolve some disputes in their contracts. I just think it's important for the legislature and the public not to lose sight of how important it is to fund the judiciary, give the judiciary the tools it needs to resolve these extremely important matters.

Rob Rosenthal:

Really fascinating information, Wayne, as always. Thanks for making some time to answer our questions.

Wayne Parsons:

Glad to talk to you. It’s good to connect again.

Rob Rosenthal:

That’s going to do it for this episode of Ask the Lawyer. My guest has been Hawaii attorney Wayne Parsons.

Remember, if you want to ask questions about your specific situation, go to askthelawyers.com, click on the button at the top of the page that says “Ask a Lawyer”, and you can do that right there. Thanks for watching. I'm Rob Rosenthal with AskTheLawyers™.

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