Her trial team was already settled into the hotel when Monica Latin got the call Friday afternoon. The jury trial set to begin Monday in U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman's Austin, Texas, courtroom had been called off because of the region's rising COVID-19 infections. 

"They'd already unloaded everything in the courthouse," Latin, managing partner at Carrington, Coleman, Sloman & Blumenthal, said in an interview with Law.com. "It's like putting the racehorse into the starting gate and then calling off the race."

For months, Latin's Dallas-based firm had been booked this week for jury trials in both Texas and California, with Latin set to fly to Orange County to try a breach-of-contract lawsuit the firm brought on behalf of a technology staffing company. Now the trial calendar is empty, after Latin learned Jan. 3 that the Central District of California was suspending jury trials until at least Jan. 24.

"It's impossible to second-guess any of these decisions under these circumstances," Latin said. "I think all of the courts are making the best decisions that they can, and I think everyone appreciates that."

Federal courts across the country are announcing trial suspensions similar to the Central District's, including the Northern District of California in San Francisco, the District of New Jersey and the District of Connecticut. Others such as Pitman's Western District of Texas are still operating at the judges' discretion, which can mean last-minute delays like Latin's team experienced or rebuffed postponement requests like a trial team for 3M recently experienced with Judge M. Casey Rodgers in the Northern District of Florida. 

Trial Backlog 'Until Eternity'

This return to COVID-19-driven trial uncertainty in some districts has left not only attorneys in a lurch but also judges, many of whom already are facing massive caseloads and trial backlogs exacerbated by the first court closures in 2020.

The Central District didn't hold jury trials in any of its Los Angeles, Santa Ana or Riverside courthouses for 14 months, and the number of trials that could go at a time was still limited when juries returned last June. 

U.S. District Judge John A. Kronstadt in Los Angeles told civil counsel in a Zoom hearing Monday that criminal matters will take priority once trials resume.

"I think we all have to recognize we can't have the level of certainty that we'd have under other circumstances," Kronstadt said.

Kronstadt's colleague, U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal, said "it's likely" the trial suspension will be extended, and he warned attorneys that the current Jan. 25 trial date is still tentative.