Good old litigation at the Daley Center

A fun day at Daley this week:

You have a court order saying your trial is set for 915 a.m. So you appear there and at 940 your case gets assigned to another courtroom...not great, but somewhat expected.

Next, you go to the new courtroom and new judge and have a short pretrial but trial is inevitable. However, in the meantime another case has been sent to this same court/judge for hearing (despite the fact we've had this trial date for some seven weeks). So the judge says to come back at 2 p.m. for the trial. That said, as we're heading out after the pretrial the judge is following us down on the elevator...hmmmm.

So trial happens at 2pm and we do get it done by 430pm or so. Granted, my angst is somewhat tied to the fact that my wife and I were trying to get an early start on some time in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but don't litigants/citizens/taxpayers deserve a bit more efficiency? Seriously, why not have a consultant come in to analyze how our court system is functioning? Why do we have status hearings (at least in-person)? Thoughts on other wasteful pieces of our "system"?