The courts have now had a little over a week to work out some of the procedural kinks in the wake of the new procedures for Cook County evictions with jury trials. I have heard from a number of sources about some of the interesting “features” of the new system for jury trials in Cook County evictions. Each of the sources I have spoken to has confirmed the rumor that the jury trial judges assigned to eviction cases are not allowing the litigants to conduct discovery as part of the jury trial process. (Discovery is the pre-trial gathering of evidence through legal procedures such as depositions, requests for the production of documents, requests to admit facts, and interrogatories.) Instead, a trial date is set by the court and the parties are instructed to be prepared with “motions in limine”, jury instructions, exhibits, etc. That procedure is sure to speed the jury trial process along and keep evictions “limited in scope”.
