Listing Seven Matters in a 315-Minute Court Day
You are the reader (peshkar) preparing the cause list for a Single Judge sitting alone. The court sits at 10:30 a.m., breaks from 1:30 p.m. to 2:15 p.m., and rises at 4:30 p.m. Six matters are listed, and a 10-minute urgent mentioning is to be taken at 10:30 before the regular list. The time estimates and constraints are:
A - part-heard matter, must be taken first among the regular matters: 45 minutes. B - final hearing: 30 minutes. C - connected with D, and per the order must be heard immediately after D: 20 minutes. D - 60 minutes, but D's counsel is available only after 2:30 p.m. E - 25 minutes, and the Ahlmad can produce the sealed record from the record room only till 1:00 p.m. F - 40 minutes.
At 12:00 noon the filing section sends up a fresh interim application that the Judge says may be mentioned today.
1. Construct a workable sequence, show the running clock, and state how much idle time the constraints create.
Read the worked answer
Available sitting time: 10:30–1:30 is 180 minutes, and 2:15–4:30 is 135 minutes, so 315 minutes in all. The matters total 10 + 45 + 30 + 20 + 60 + 25 + 40 = 230 minutes.
Sequence: 10:30–10:40 mentioning; 10:40–11:25 A; 11:25–11:50 E (Ahlmad's record is needed before 1:00, so E must sit in the morning block); 11:50–12:20 B; 12:20–1:00 F. That fills the morning to 1:00. Lunch is 1:30–2:15, so 1:00–1:30 is idle. D cannot start before 2:30, so 2:15–2:30 is also idle; D runs 2:30–3:30 and C, which must follow D, runs 3:30–3:50.
Idle time is therefore 45 minutes (30 before lunch plus 15 after it), and the court finishes at 3:50, 40 minutes before rising. The judgement is not the arithmetic alone: E is pulled into the morning for the Ahlmad, D is pushed to the afternoon for counsel, and C is pinned to D by the order.
2. The Judge must leave at 3:45 p.m. for an administrative meeting. What do you do with the 12:00 interim application and with matter C?
Read the worked answer
Use the idle time rather than the Judge's margin. The interim application can be taken at 1:00–1:20, inside the pre-lunch idle slot, provided the opposite side is present or has been given notice; if notice is not complete, it should be mentioned only for directions and posted, not argued ex parte.
With C the problem is real: D runs to 3:30, C needs 20 minutes, and the Judge leaves at 3:45 - a 5-minute shortfall. Correct handling is to ask D's counsel to be ready at 2:15 sharp, which recovers 15 minutes and lets C finish by 3:35. If counsel cannot come earlier, C is adjourned to a short date with the order recorded, rather than being squeezed into five minutes or heard in a hurry.
The test here is that a cause list is a plan with fallbacks, and the reader's job is to protect the quality of hearing time, not to show a fully utilised list.
3. What percentage of the available sitting time is actually used on the plan you have built, and what does that figure tell you?
Read the worked answer
Used time is 230 minutes, plus the 20-minute interim application if it is taken, giving 250 minutes; available sitting time is 315 minutes.
Without the interim application: 230 ÷ 315 = 0.730, that is 73 per cent. With it: 250 ÷ 315 = 0.794, about 79 per cent.
The figure is informative because the shortfall is not caused by an overloaded list - 230 minutes fit comfortably in 315 - but by two fixed constraints: the Ahlmad's availability until 1:00 and D's counsel's availability only after 2:30. That is a scheduling problem, not a capacity problem. The practical conclusion is to keep the idle slot at 1:00–1:30 for mentioning and miscellaneous work, and to record in the list why D is fixed in the afternoon, so that a reviewing officer does not read the 45 idle minutes as slackness.