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Ch 4. Overload
The overload indicator relates the size of the Court’s caseload to its capacity to meet its time standards. A Court may be meeting its time standards (that is, have no backlog) but nevertheless be headed for trouble. The overload indicator tells the Court whether it has more cases, and what number more, than the number it can finalise within its time standards (assuming existing conditions are maintained). In short, it can provide an early warning that a Court may not continue to meet its performance standards, and it indicates how the Court will need to alter its finalisation rate if it is to avoid getting into, or needs to get out of trouble. The message is, again, simple: ‘the Court has n more cases on hand than it can handle within the time it has set for itself.’
The general formula for calculating this number is as follows —
Overload = Ptotal - (T * F), where Ptotal is the number of pending cases, F is the average number of cases the Court finalises each month and T is the maximum average time which can be taken by all cases if the Court is still to meet its time standards.
Essentially, the Overload formula calculates whether the Court has the capacity to turnover its total pending caseload within the range of times defined by its time standards — assuming it continues to perform at its current level. The fundamental measure of the Court’s capacity used in the formula is F, average monthly finalisations. This is, of course, a historical measure — but also one chosen as a future estimate. Although finalisation rates are typically more stable than new registrations, it is nevertheless usual that there are significant month-to-month fluctuations, particularly at some times of the year and in the higher courts. No hard and fast directions can be given about the period over which the average monthly finalisation rate should be calculated, beyond observing that a fixed period should be settled upon which will tend to ‘smooth out’ month-to-month fluctuations and produce a reliable long-term indication of the finalisation rate. As a rule of thumb, it can be suggested that the average could be calculated for the immediately preceding period of months equal to — and certainly no greater than — the normative time standard. This, however, might be safely shortened in a Court with no history of significant month-to-month fluctuations in finalisation rates.
Taking the example of the Intermediate Court (Figure 2) the formula for calculating Overload becomes —
Overload = Ptotal - (13.2 * F), where Ptotal is the number of pending cases and F is the average monthly rate of finalisations for the preceding 12 months (total finalisations in the 12 month period divided by 12).
The apparently mysterious 13.2, the value of T in this example (the maximum average time which can be taken by all cases if the Court is still to meet its time standards), is simply (0.9 * 12) + (0.1 * 24). It is possible to give a complex mathematical derivation of this formula but, for the less mathematically inclined, it can be understood intuitively by explaining that the maximum average time will be taken if the 90% of cases which must be finalised within 12 months are finished in exactly 12 months, and the remaining 10% are finished in exactly 24 months (2 years).
Overload can also be expressed as a percentage of the Court’s capacity to handle its caseload within time standards, by modifying the general formula given above only slightly —
Overload(%) = 100 * [Ptotal /(T * F)] - 100
The result delivers the basic message in altered terms: ‘the Court’s caseload is larger than the number it can handle within its time standards by y%’. (The calculation may yield a negative number, which actually indicates that the Court is ‘underloaded’ or has surplus capacity.) This statistic has been added since the Discussion Paper as a recommended inclusion in the Model Report because it enriches the amount of information and is arguably a more meaningful statistic for readers of the Report who are not very familiar with the circumstances of a particular court.