§ 140A.106.Special Docketing Procedures

A docketing mechanism, and it operates without any judicial gatekeeping.

The attorney general may file a certificate stating that the case is of special public importance. The clerk must immediately furnish a copy to the administrative judge of the district court of the county. On receiving it, that judge shall immediately designate a judge to hear and determine the proceeding, and the designated judge shall promptly assign the proceeding for hearing, participate in hearings, make determinations, and cause the action to be expedited.

Every verb after the certificate is mandatory. The clerk must furnish, the administrative judge must designate, and the designated judge must expedite — and no one reviews whether the case is of special public importance.

The certificate is the attorney general’s own assertion, and it moves the case to the front of the queue on that assertion alone.

Why speed matters here is concrete. These proceedings involve freezing assets, and assets move. A case that waits months for a setting may find nothing left to attach.

There is a further reason: the chapter contemplates parallel criminal proceedings, and the abatement provision lets a prosecutor stop the civil suit that interferes with them. Sequencing matters.

The mechanism is borrowed from federal antitrust practice, where the Attorney General may file a certificate of special public importance to the same effect — including the same requirement that the judge cause the action to be expedited.

The companion racketeering chapter carries an identical provision.