Central American Cases Push Others Aside

January 27, 2015 By
One way to respond to the immigration courts crisis highlighted by those unaccompanied minors from Central America would be to overhaul the system and increase capacity. Another would be to push those cases ahead of others in hopes of discouraging other migrants from coming. Guess which one we’re doing? 
 
The Houston Chronicle has a strong story about “… a startling turnaround for a clogged immigration court system that usually takes about six months between just these first steps [as opposed to 30 days], reflecting the government’s effort to push Central American cases through the pipeline to deter other migrants from coming. The aggressive effort, however, has ramifications for others in the system, which is facing a record backlog of more than 430,000 cases nationwide. Some immigrants’ hearings have been delayed indefinitely, which can impede time-sensitive cases and jeopardize their chances of gaining legal residency. Mexicans, who make up the largest portion of immigration courts’ caseload, saw their disposition times increase by about 13 percent to 533 days, according to a new analysis of court records by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.”
 
“The Central American cases have completely taken over the docket,” immigration attorney Salvador Colon told the paper, while another noted that “they’re shoving all the Central Americans in front saying, ‘Go home and tell everyone else not to come because you’re going to be deported. The immigration court here looks like a day care because there are so many little kids hopping around.”
 
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Undocumented Residents Get Cal. Drivers License

January 22, 2015 By
The Golden State is muddling through its first month of offering drivers licenses to undocumented residents, expecting to process nearly 1.5 million applications over the next several years. The Sacramento TV station KCRA reports on one challenge: … immigrant advocates have urged applicants who previously used someone else’s Social Security number to obtain a driver’s license to check with a lawyer before applying. Advocates say they have seen a handful of cases where immigrants who previously had licenses were told they would need to meet with a DMV investigator to complete their applications.”
 
The report notes that “… immigration attorney Patricia Corrales said three of her clients who went to DMV offices to apply for the licenses were frightened after they were told they needed to sign an affidavit acknowledging fraud.” She added that seems to work against the idea of the program, which is to get more undocumented residents to obtain driver’s licenses.
 
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State Chief Justice Defends Admin Record

January 20, 2015 By
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
Filed Under: Cases, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , ,

Denver Case Foreshadows Immigration Showdowns

January 15, 2015 By
A new twist in civil immigration is emerging in Denver, as an immigrant is taking sanctuary in a church basement while protestors make his case an example of people trapped in the on-again, off-again immigration policy crated by President Obama’s executive actions and the resulting Republican opposition.
 
The Denver Post reports that Arturo Hernandez Garcia, who is in the United States without legal permission, has been living under sanctuary protection in the First Unitarian Society of Denver church. Jennifer Piper, who is with the Denver office of American Friends Service Committee, said he plans to remain in sanctuary until he can secure some relief. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, an immigration court refused to reopen Garcia’s case. His next steps are to apply for a legal stay to stop deportation and to apply for status under Obama’s orders.
 
About 40 of his supporters rallied outside the immigration court building in downtown Denver to protest the latest legal action in his case.On the same day, the House passed a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that contains amendments that would gut President Obama’s immigration reform measures. One amendment also would end the 3-year-old program that gives law-abiding immigrants brought to the country as children the right to work and to be free from the threat of deportation.
 
You can expect that immigrants, especially those with families including United States citizens, are going to repeat the Denver example. So stay tuned and check out the Post story here: Immigration vote sends chilling message to those facing deportation
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High Court Backs Homeowners In Mortgage-Recession Row

January 13, 2015 By
The U.S. Supreme Court came down on the side of homeowners Tuesday, ruling in favor of mortgage-takers trying to back out of their deals as they accuse banks of failing to follow federal “truth in lending laws.” Reuters explains that “… on a 9-0 vote, the court handed a win to an Eagan, Minnesota couple, Larry and Cheryle Jesinoski, over the $611,000 loan they obtained in 2007 from Countrywide Home Loans Inc, now part of Bank of America Corp.”
 
More broadly, the ruling underscores that federal law “… allows consumers to rescind a mortgage for up to three years after it was made if the lender does not notify them of various details about the loan including finance charges and interest rates.”
 
The move could have significant implications for mortgage industry process and for homeowners who feel they were not notified of specific mortgage terms. Read the story here: UPDATE 1-U.S. Supreme Court rules for homeowners over mortgage dispute
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Court Admin. Salaries Under Fire With Audit

January 8, 2015 By
California’s court management blew $30 million over four years on what a state audit is calling “questionable” expenses and salaries. The audit is sure to become an issue as the state heads into budget season with court leadership seeking to replace some $1 billion of recent-years cuts.
 
Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (Photo: California Courts)

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (Photo: California Courts)

The audit was ordered by the state Legislature as part of the back-and-forth with court supporters who seek more funding. Some lawmakers have argued that the court administrators are not taking care of the purse strings. The debate has at least brought a re-branding: the Judicial Council, the policymaking arm of the courts, was previously called the Administrative Office of the Courts, or the AOC.
 
The Los Angeles Times reflected the tone of how the report is being received, reporting that “… auditors found the administrative office paid eight of its nine office directors more than $179,000 a year, which is higher than the salary for the governor and his top administration staff” and that a manager “… hired three months ago to run the San Francisco-based 800-employee agency, is the top earner, witan annual salary of $227,000. The governor earns $177,000 a year, less than the justices he appoints to serve on the California Supreme Court and less than is earned by some county court administrators.”
 
Filed Under: Cases, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Newsweek Notes ‘Civil Gideon’ In Eviction Issue

January 7, 2015 By
If 2015 is going to be the “Tipping Point” year for civil Gideon in the United States, then stories like a recent Newsweek report are going to play an important role. Writer Victoria Bekiempis calls the right to council in eviction proceedings “another civil rights movement… quietly gaining momentum.”
 
Some key points in her report: In New York City, some 90 percent of tenants in housing court don’t have attorneys while about 90 percent of landlords do; about one-third of persons in NYC homeless shelters arrive immediately after an eviction; some 30,000 families were evicted last year; each bed in a New York City homeless shelter costs $36,000 annually, experts say, while it would cost $1,600 to $3,200 to represent a client in housing court.
 
Bekiempis’ story is the sort of year-starter that gets picked up (like, say, we’re doing now) and includes important resources for anyone interested in how justice gets rationed. For civil Gideon fans, it’s already required reading, and you can find it here: Housing: The Other Civil Rights Movement.
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Senator Seeks Cameras In Fed. Courts

January 6, 2015 By
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, poised to become Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, is already making increased court transparency a priority. The Des Moines Register reports that the senator “… is again encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to add cameras in the courtroom.” His encouragement comes in the wake of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts dedicating his year-end “state of the courts” report on technology, but without even mentioning cameras in the courtroom.
 
“In his year-end report, Chief Justice Roberts rightly promotes how the courts have embraced new technology,” Grassley is quoted as saying in the report from the Associated Press. “Unfortunately, though, the courts have yet to embrace the one technology that the founders would likely have advocated for — cameras in the courtroom. The founders intended for trials to be held in front of all people who wished to attend.”
 
The senator has introduced legislation to force the courts to allow cameras and says he will do so again. See the story here: Grassley: Put cameras in the Supreme Court

 

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Roberts Promises Supreme Court E-filing

January 6, 2015 By
U.S. Chief Justice Robert’s annual “state of the judiciary” report has brought the usual level of yawn, but his comments on court tech did catch some media. A good example is from The Washington Post, which noted that “… there is, in fact, a nugget of newsy news in Roberts’s“2014 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary”: The Supreme Court will bypass the federal judiciary’s somewhat troubled electronic case-filing system in favor of its own, expected to come in 2016. But the chief justice’s accounting is perhaps most useful for what, with a bit of between-the-lines reading, it reveals about why, he admits, ‘the courts will often choose to be late to the harvest of American ingenuity.'”
 
It’s not all that encouraging for anyone hoping the nation’s highest court would become more transparent, especially since issues like cameras in the courtroom seem far, far away.
 
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Bankruptcy, Court Capacity Headline Asbestos Conference

March 18, 2014 By
 
An ongoing North Carolina bankruptcy case cast a 2,413-mile-long shadow across the big Perrin Conference on “cutting-edge asbestos issues” being held in Los Angeles this week, with one panelist calling a recent order in the case “the most significant change” in asbestos litigation in a decade, while another said everybody needs to “slow down, take a deep breath and wait for the outcome.”
 
Court capacity was another hot issue, with conference panelists connecting dots from bankrupt companies to increased caseloads to nearly bankrupt courts. A New York City judge who handles asbestos there warned that there are not enough resources to handle the expected increase, and another panelist pointed out that the average asbestos case take more time than typical civil cases: twice as much time for a judge and four times more time for court staff.
 
The bankruptcy case being talked about in the hallways and across panels is called “Garlock” and involves a North Carolina company. and the long shadow comes from a scathing judge’s order that noted issues involving bankruptcy trusts. Such court-approved trusts are set up to pay ongoing claims, and the judge found that some firms are apparently withholding evidence during litigation but still filing against the trust. Such evidence of other asbestos exposures can be vital to a defendant trying to prove they were either not at fault or at lesser fault.
 
The Perrin Conference continues today (Tuesday, March 18) at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel with California asbestos judges from both Los Angeles and San Francisco scheduled to participate. (Programming note: The CCM is staffing the conference will post an original summary of the conversations later this week. Publisher Sara Warner has also published her take on the Garlock issue in the Huffington Post.)
Filed Under: Cases, Community, National
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