[Author’s Note: Throughout the years, judges have been under enormous pressure to settle cases in order to reduce the bulging inventory of civil cases awaiting trial. In 1986, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler with the deft assistance of then New York County Chief Clerk and Executive Officer of the Supreme Court, New York County Civil Term Jonathan Lippman established what became known as the IAS or Individual Assignment System under which an individual judge would be responsible for a case from beginning (motion practice) to end (trial). It was thought that the efficiencies of having a case overseen by just one judge would help streamline and dispose of more cases than previously under what was known as the Master Calendar System where cases would proceed to different Court Parts depending on the trajectory of the case. The IAS system found its principal focal point in the Supreme Court, New York County although its tentacles extended throughout the state. It was a visionary program of court management but I think it’s fair to say it didn’t work.

This story is a fictionalized amalgam of many actual instances that I experienced in my years as a trial judge serving in the Supreme Court, New York County’s Civil Term. It depicts the pressures that existed on all of us before IAS, during and beyond to deal with the case load that kept growing and growing and especially those cases that we commonly called “old dogs,” the ones that just wouldn’t ever disappear. Here is one such case. The story was first told in a New York Law Journal story under the same title on October 16, 1989. It has been modified and is re-published here.]