Litigants in the U.S. District Courts in the Eastern District of Texas often remark on the somewhat unusual local rules and procedures many of the judges follow, which include mandatory document disclosures, page limits on briefs, limitations on permissible activity in depositions and a hotline for discovery disputes.
But many of these procedures — which contributed to the district’s current reputation as a popular forum for complex litigation, such as patent infringement cases — date back to the same document: the district’s Civil Justice Expense and Delay Reduction Plan, adopted Dec. 20, 1991, pursuant to the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1991 (CJRA), 28 U.S.C. 471, et seq.
