CM Publisher Has HuffPo Piece On GOP Civil Tort Priorities

Courts Monitor Publisher Sara Warner has published a Huffington Post story with her take on recent developments involving the New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. She notes that “… the new Republican-controlled congress rolled up its sleeves and rolled out its agenda over the last week, and along with immigration and budget issues it turns out “asbestos litigation reform” is an apparent priority. The powerful House Judiciary Committee held a formal hearing in Washington in what amounts to a national campaign targeted at bankruptcy transparency – but fueled largely by both a landmark federal case out of North Carolina and the ongoing New York scandal involving the arrest of state assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.”
 

State Chief Justice Defends Admin Record

In the wake of that state auditor’s report questioning some $30 million in judicial branch spending Audit finds $30 million in ‘questionable’ court spending and salaries, California’s Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye is going on the defensive. In a relatively rare SoCal TV interview with Los Angeles NBC affiliate Channel 4.
 
The TV setup notes that “… Cantil-Sakauye has been criticized by a group of lower-court judges for not doing enough to send resources to Superior Courts in the state’s 58 counties. The Alliance of California Judges seized on a recent audit which questioned nearly $30 million in court staff spending. The audit noted the use of 66 state cars by staff, that some court administrators made more than the governor and had offices in three cities instead of one.” She counters by noting cutbacks and need for multiple offices to meet the needs of different sections of the state. See the interview here: CA Chief Justice on State of Courts

Making A Business Case For Fully Funding Courts

An opinion piece in The Boston Globe is the latest to make the business case for a well-funded justice system. It cites a recent white paper that illustrates how “… inadequate funding of the state court system has an adverse impact on the economy as a whole.” It also notes the oft-cited Los Angeles study documenting billions of dollars in economic losses.
 
The column argues that “… efforts to quantify the economic harm caused by underfunding have revealed staggering losses. For example, a 2009 Micronomics Group study of the County of Los Angeles revealed that superior court budget deficits of between $79 million and $140 million would result in economic losses greater than $59 billion. Other studies have shown similar results. Given the established correlation between underfunding and economic loss, why would we ever choose not to fully fund and staff our state courts?”
 

A.G. Holder Exiting Amid ‘Unfinished’ Work With Immigration Courts

While praising his actions to bring the first Justice Department action against states over immigration laws, a leading immigration activist says U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder – or his replacement – has work to do on the nation’s immigration courts. The civil immigration system is operated by Holder’s Justice Department, and the judges are Justice Department employees.
 
The ongoing immigration court crisis, with its 400,000-case backlog and fast-tracking of suddenly high-profile Central American children seeking entry to the United States, is not gaining widespread coverage as news organizations ponder the Holder legacy. But Marielena Hincapié, director of the National Immigration Law Center, noted the issue after first praising the A.G. for “helping to establish immigration as an important area of civil rights.”
 
She told The Washington Post that “… we really saw an attorney general and a department of justice that was willing to lead on these issues and to take risky moves.” But, the Post added, “… yet she added that Holder (or his successor) still has some important unfinished business with regard to the country’s immigration courts, which are overseen by the Justice Department and are overwhelmed with cases.”
 

TV Station Blasts Chief Justice’s Use of CHP ‘Armed Taxis”

Noting that it costs some $4 million per year (and $21 million since 2009), the ABC News affiliate in Sacramento has aired an investigative story on how California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye uses armed CHP officers for transportation. Notes the station: “Surveillance video captured California’s chief justice using her armed Highway Patrol escort to take her to her Sacramento home. The video shows the plain-clothed officer removing what appears to be shopping bags from the trunk of an unmarked car.”
 
The report makes a stong link between the chief justice’s request for additional court funding and her use of the CHP protective service. The video of the CHP officer driving her home and removing shopping bags from the state vehicle is repeated. CHP rides for judges: Security or personal taxi?

Finally: Capacity Cited In Immigration Courts Crisis

For the “about time” file, discussion of the ongoing crisis of unaccompanied Central American children seeking refuge in the U.S. is moving beyond theories and finger-pointing to address the capacity issue. And that issue is that there’s not enough court capacity.
 
The Reuters news service has a sobering report that walks us through the numbers: “… U.S. immigration courts have a backlog of 375,373 cases, almost 50,000 more than they faced two years ago, according to Justice Department figures… one of the 243 judges presiding over 59 immigration courts in the United States, is setting hearing dates as far off as 2018. It now typically takes three to five years for cases to clear the system, judges and lawyers said… on a recent Wednesday at a crowded immigration court in Arlington, Virginia, a judge was setting February 2017 asylum hearings for juveniles. While Reuters does not mention it, we would add that this is possible because immigration courts are civil, not criminal, and thus exempt from decades of “timely trial” laws.
 
The report does cite budget cuts and other problems, like passing more complex laws without increasing capacity to implement the changes, but also says that the government’s planned solutions are likely to only make things worse.
 

Gov. Brown Calls Child-Immigration Crisis A ‘Tragedy,’ Critic Says Comments Are ‘Empty’

Photo: gov.ca.gov.com

Photo: gov.ca.gov.com

California Gov. Jerry Brown, who has said the Golden State could be a “leader” on national immigration policy even though the issues involved are usually federally controlled, has called the border-crossing crisis involving unaccompanied children a “crisis,” but stopped well short of commenting on what the state might do about the situation, according to a Fresno Bee newspaper report. The Bee also reports that Brown “…accused critics of exploiting the situation for political gain.”

 
The Bee also reported that the governor’s state Office of Emergency Services “… said earlier this week that the administration has been coordinating with federal and local law enforcement officials, including providing assistance with crowd and traffic control. Brown said Friday that California is a destination for immigrants because they think the state is ‘great.'”
 
“By the way, they may come in through Texas because they have so many holes in the border down there, but they usually want to get over to California as fast as they can because stuff is happening here,” Brown said. He added, “I’m not saying I’m encouraging that. I’m not.”
 
Meanwhile, Neel Kashkari, the Republican conducting what’s largely seen as a longshot campaign to unseat Brown in the November election, called the governor’s comments “empty.”

Read more here.

 

‘One-Day’ Divorce Is National Trend

Of course it’s not really “one day,” but faster, do-it-yourself, lawyer-free divorces are becoming a national trend, according to the New York Times. A driving issue is cost, reports the NYT,  which reports that “… costs vary by location, but Randall M. Kessler, a family law specialist in Atlanta, said a typical divorce with no major disagreements over assets and custody issues might cost a few thousand dollars, while cases with significant disputes can easily cost $25,000 or more

 In California, says the report, roughly three-fourths of family law litigants lack lawyers, according to  Maureen F. Hallahan, supervising judge in the family law division at San Diego Superior Court. Typically, people file initial divorce paperwork on their own, but they don’t know what to do next, so their file languishes for months. Budget cuts in the state courts reduced available personnel and made the problem worse.

 Like most “one-day” programs, the term doesn’t mean a divorce is truly started and completed in a single day — residency and notification requirements have to be met first. You must, for example, already have filed a divorce petition and served your spouse with divorce papers to participate. But the program does allow you to wrap things up in a single day, or even a matter of hours, once you meet the initial criteria. “This is designed to help people get through the system,” said Judge Hallahan.

Read the story here: California Pioneers the Court-Aided One-Day Divorce

Presiding Judge: Justice Rationing To Continue

Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge David Wesley say the just-passed California budget will not require additional staff reductions, but will also not replace previous cutbacks. The judge is being quoted in published reports saying that “… the California courts have suffered five years of reductions in state funding, and many courts have reduced their workforces by as much as one-quarter, with no lessening of their statutory and constitutional obligations. We are being forced to ration access to justice.
 
He added that “… people trying to do the right thing and pay a traffic ticket, find themselves stymied by long lines and antiquated technology… crime victims, and the law enforcement officers acting as witnesses in their cases, are burdened with long travel times because the local courthouse was closed.”
 

Secret Deals May Mean More Court Money

They are the most important decisions being made for people of California, so of course the negotiations are going on in secret – but the “leaks” are that courts are about to get a “modest” increase over previous drafts of Gov. Brown’s proposal, according to published news report.

The Contra Costa Times reports that this year’s deal-making is going nicely, saying that “… the knockdown, drag-out partisan fights, stretching on for months, are history. These days, state budget negotiations are downright cordial.” And the paper adds that “… according to Capitol sources briefed on closed-door budget negotiations, the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers have quietly reached deals on funding prekindergarten, pumping more money into the state’s beleaguered court system and funding levels for the state’s controversial bullet train.”

On courts, the report also says that “… after proposing a $160 million increase in spending for California’s courts, Brown has reportedly agreed to another modest bump in funding for the judicial system, whose budget was hit hard at the height of the state’s financial crisis.”