The Williams smoking case is a good example of how the judicial system, because of the way it lingers over important cases, fails to do the job people have a right to expect.

The least that people have a right to expect is that decisions will be reached within a reasonable time.

Jesse Williams of Portland, a smoker of Marlboro cigarettes since the 1950s, died of lung cancer in 1997. His widow sued the cigarette company, and a Portland jury awarded her $79.5 million in damages. Appeals have consumed the time since then, and the story is still not over.

The smoker in this case was said to have believed that the company would not sell him something that might harm him. This despite decades of publicly available information to the contrary.

One important issue in the appeals was whether the damage award was excessive. The U.S. Supreme Court said it was, leaving it to the Oregon courts to set a more acceptable amount.

Now the Oregon Supreme Court has once again upheld the original damage award in a decision that evidently turned on the content of jury instructions. Philip Morris may appeal again.

In “Bleak House,” Charles Dickens described a similar process. In that story the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce has gone on for longer than anyone can remember. Sometimes it’s as though nothing has improved in the intervening century and a half.

Everywhere else in the public and private sector, people have deadlines. In Oregon law, local government has 180 days to make a decision on some land-use applications. The courts need that kind of a goal, maybe not as stringent, but a deadline nevertheless.

In an action like the Williams case, juries of people untrained in the law are given a few days at the most to make a decision. Surely we can expect our appellate judges, aided by clerks to do the detail work, to finally settle such a case in a couple of years after it is appealed. (hh)