Short answer. There is a limit. Section 2 caps any single adjournment at one month and caps total adjournments at three months overall, unless the Supreme Court's Court Administrator authorizes more in writing; the party who caused a postponement is still expected to finish presenting evidence within the previously agreed remaining dates.
What the law says
A court may adjourn a trial from day to day, and to any stated time, as the expeditious and convenient transaction of business may require, but shall have no power to adjourn a trial for a longer period than one [ ] month for each adjournment, nor more than three [ ] months in all, except when authorized in writing by the Court Administrator, Supreme Court.
Rule 30, Section 2 — Adjournments and postponements. Read the full provision →
The two caps
No single adjournment may exceed one month, and the cumulative total across all adjournments in the case may not exceed three months — both subject to the narrow exception of written authorization from the Court Administrator of the Supreme Court. These are hard outer limits on the court's own scheduling discretion, not mere guidelines a judge may depart from simply because the parties agree or the calendar happens to be congested.
Adjournment as a docket-management tool
The section frames adjournment as within the court's own discretion — it 'may adjourn a trial from day to day, and to any stated time' — but balances that discretion with the fixed caps, rather than leaving postponements open-ended. A court can still manage its calendar flexibly within those bounds, moving a trial date around as convenience requires, so long as the one-month and three-month ceilings are respected.
The party at fault still has to finish on schedule
Even after a postponement, the party who caused it is warned that presentation of its evidence must still be terminated on the remaining dates previously agreed upon — a postponement doesn't automatically reset or extend that party's remaining allotted time. The caps on adjournment length work alongside this separate discipline on how long a party actually gets to keep presenting evidence.
Why the caps exist
They push back against chronic case delay, treating routine multi-month postponements as an exception requiring special authorization rather than a normal feature of trial scheduling. Fixed outer limits keep a case moving toward resolution instead of drifting indefinitely at the convenience of whichever party benefits from delay. Requiring the Court Administrator's written authorization to go beyond the caps also creates a paper trail, so open-ended delay cannot simply happen through informal agreement between the court and one of the parties.
Related provisions
- Rule 30, Section 2 — Adjournments and postponements
- Rule 30, Section 4 — Hearing days and calendar call