Is OATH Too Good at Its Job?
When the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) took over most hearings at the DOE, it promised that it would stick to timelines. We thought that was promising, but it quickly turned into a case of, “Be careful what you wish for.”
OATH has been aggressively scheduling hearings at a rate that is dizzying to practitioners. Shortly after filing a case in July of this year, I was surprised to learn that OATH wanted to schedule a hearing by the end of the following month. In previous years, a 12-month case filed in July would be lucky to get a hearing by April of the following calendar year.
We applaud OATH’s drive and competency, but having some time — call it the Goldilocks zone — is necessary for settlement negotiations to unfold. In fact, we had pendency in this case and so stood to gain nothing from continued litigation. OATH’s accelerated schedule would have meant six fewer months to negotiate and prepare.
OATH has since become less aggressive in pushing for hearings, but that brings up another type of meeting: the status conference. OATH is continuing to require attorneys and advocates to attend frequent meetings in person. Since OATH took over, it is not unusual for us to be tied up with conferences every half hour — starting at 8:30 in the morning and continuing into the mid afternoon. This is causing serious pressure on our time because a five to 15 minute interruption every half hour is not good for anyone's work flow.
In response, Gottlieb & Wang is doubling down in the hopes that additional complaints from the DOE will help drive reform. These status conferences are eating into the DOE representatives’ time as well, such that they are also struggling to find opportunities to come to meaningful settlements.
OATH’s practices are certainly what the legislature wrote in the statutes, but not necessarily what they were contemplating. These frequent updates are preventing us from actually working on these cases and getting them settled. This is disconcerting, but not insurmountable. Gottlieb & Wang is continuing to pursue settlement as aggressively as ever.
Marc Gottlieb
Partner
195 Montague Street
14th Floor
Brooklyn Heights, NY, 11201
Marc@GottliebFirm.com
(646) 820-8506