COVID-19 and the New York Court System: A Case for Modernization

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down ordinary life in New York in the spring of 2020, it also shut down most of the machinery of civil litigation. Courthouses limited in-person operations, calendars froze, and lawyers across the state suddenly had to figure out how to keep cases moving through a system whose basic architecture predates the personal computer. This post, written in the thick of that period, captures both the moment and a larger point that outlasted the pandemic: New York’s civil court system runs on procedures designed for a paper-and-courtroom world, and it showed.

The Original Post (April 2020)

I received an email from someone about my sporadic posts on here and asking if I am alright. To answer, yes, I am alright. I am hunkered here in New York. I have taken to another medium to express my frustrations about what is happening. I never leave home without my N-95 masks. Shout out to my office manager for her foresight on stocking up when this virus initially hit China. She knew what was going to happen. Sadly, I sensed it but only because of what I was seeing in my travelling late last year and earlier this year.

Now, you cannot even get bleach or food half the time down here. By the way, please wear the masks if you are around people. It is inconvenient but it is the right thing to do. You do not have the right to get me or anyone else sick. If you’re dealing with a no-fault insurance defense matter, an experienced attorney can help protect your rights.

My favorite topic on here as of late is the Court system. I still cannot fathom how our 1970s model can handle the current reality. Perhaps some of us should sit on a committee and give ideas on how the rules of Court and even the CPLR need to be tweaked to handle the current reality? We can really take lessons from other state systems on how to modernize our systems. The first error I see is using Skype. That is outdated technology: early 2000s.

Send a response – let us know you are alive and well and staying sane.

The Court System’s Technology Problem

The complaint in the original post was not really about videoconferencing software. It was about institutional design. The CPLR — the Civil Practice Law and Rules, New York’s civil procedure code — took effect in the 1960s and, despite decades of amendments, still assumes a practice built around physical papers, in-person appearances, and courthouse clerks’ offices. Layered on top of that are the Uniform Rules for the trial courts and the individual part rules of hundreds of judges, each with its own expectations about how motions are submitted, how conferences are held, and how exhibits are handled.

A system like that can function when everyone can walk into the courthouse. When nobody can, every assumption breaks at once. Calendar calls, settlement conferences, depositions, motion arguments, trials — all of it depended on physical presence, and the system had no ready substitute. Electronic filing existed in some courts but was far from universal, and remote appearances were the exception rather than a built-in option.

Other court systems — in other states and in the federal courts — had already moved further toward electronic filing, remote conferencing, and standardized digital practice before 2020. New York’s experience during the pandemic was a forced, improvised version of that transition, accomplished through emergency administrative orders rather than considered rulemaking.

Why Modernization Matters for Litigants

Court modernization sounds like an abstract policy debate, but it has concrete consequences for anyone with a case in the system.

Delay is a substantive harm. For an injured plaintiff waiting on a personal injury recovery, or a medical provider carrying hundreds of unpaid no-fault bills, every month of calendar backlog is real money. High-volume practices — and no-fault litigation in the New York City Civil Court and the District Courts on Long Island is as high-volume as civil practice gets — feel procedural friction more acutely than anyone. A system that requires an in-person appearance for a routine adjournment multiplies cost across thousands of files.

Procedural traps multiply in a disrupted system. When deadlines, calendars, and filing mechanics are in flux, the parties most likely to be hurt are those without counsel who watch the rules daily. Missed conference dates, miscalendared motions, and confusion over tolled deadlines generate defaults and dismissals that have nothing to do with the merits.

Remote practice is now permanent. What began as an emergency accommodation became a fixture. Virtual conferences and remote appearances persisted after courthouses reopened, precisely because they solved problems the old model never could. The question raised in this post — whether the CPLR and the rules of court should be deliberately redesigned around modern technology, rather than patched ad hoc — remains a live one.

For practitioners, the lesson of the period is durable: know not just the CPLR but the administrative orders and part rules that overlay it, because in a fast-moving environment the operative rule is often the most recent one posted, not the one in the statute book.

Related Resources

• Law office failure as a reasonable excuse in New York courts — the doctrine that often determines whether pandemic-era (and other) missed deadlines are forgivable
• CPLR 3212(g) paradigm and court procedures
• Critical timing rules for summary judgment motions under CPLR 3212(a)
• Reasonable excuse standards in default judgment cases
• No-fault verification requirements and court compliance
• New York No-Fault Insurance Law
• The firm’s Legal Encyclopedia collects our doctrinal guides to New York no-fault and personal injury law
• No-fault insurance defense practice — how we handle these cases for insurers and self-insureds