Chief Justice: Justice Rationing Is A Civil Rights Issue

January 15, 2014 By
 
The real battle over Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2014-15 budget plans got under way this week with California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye saying that budget cuts are not just a fiscal problem but a civil rights problem. Her comments at a Tuesday press conference and in related interviews indicate that the “civil rights issue” will likely highlight this year’s argument for more courts funding. Last year, cuts in Los Angeles County brought threats of legal action based largely on access issues.
 
The chief justice told the Los Angeles Times that the governor’s spending plan probably would trigger more courthouse closures and layoffs and increase delays for trials and divorce and custody matters. Brown’s plan includes an “additional” $105 million for the courts in 2014-15, but Cantil-Sakauye wants a three-year plan with much more spending. “We are rationing justice, and it has become more than a fiscal problem,” Cantil-Sakauye told reporters. “It is, in my view, it is now a civil rights problem. … We know we are denying the protections of an American democracy.”

You can read the L.A. Times story here.

 
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Long Beach Facing High-Profile Judge Race

January 14, 2014 By
 
By Los Angeles Superior Court judicial election standards, it seems Long Beach is approaching a knock-down, drag-out election. The Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a legal newspaper known for its judicial election coverage, is reporting that L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Carol Najera is running for the Los Angeles Superior Court.  
Carol Najera, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney (Photo from a report by Metropolitan News-Enterprise)

Carol Najera, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney (Photo from a report by Metropolitan News-Enterprise)

That would be a challenge to incumbent Judge James Pierce, who sits in Long Beach. The report cited a judge “… who knows both Najera and Pierce, and who asked not to be named” as explaining that Najera “hates” the incumbent and “thinks he’s a terrible judge.” Najera, who was not available for comment for the report, is also connected to the high-profile Menendez brothers trail. She was on team that convicted the brothers of murdering their parents. That conviction came after an earlier trial ended with a hung jury.

The report also said the apparent candidate “… recently tweeted that she will kick off her campaign at an event in Long Beach Jan. 23.” Judge Pierce was appointed to the bench by then-Gov. George Deukmejian in 1989 and has previously served as a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner.
 

Check out the story here. 

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Court Budget Hike Tied To Pension, Other Changes

January 10, 2014 By
 
Gov. Brown’s new budget proposal includes $3.2 billion for the state’s courts, an increase of $105 million from last year, but also eliminates local trial court reserve funds in favor of a a large “rainy day” fund in control of the Judicial Council. It also takes aim at forcing court workers to contribute more to their pension funds, according to coverage in The Courthouse News Service.
 
“There is a longstanding disparity in trial court employees in terms of how much they pay into their pensions,” said Department of Finance Director Michael Cohen, as quoted in CNS. “There are some employees in the court system that still pay nothing into their pensions. We need to move toward employees paying into roughly half the cost of their pensions.”
 
The CNS also offered this: “Though pressed by reporters, Cohen declined to say whether the pension mandate will apply to employees of the Administrative Office of the Courts, the judiciary’s administrative agency based in San Francisco. The top 30 administrators in the AOC enjoyed a top-loaded pension perk where the taxpayers contributed 22 percent on top of salary to the administrators’ pension accounts without any matching contribution from the individual administrator.”
 
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‘City In Decline’ Report Skips Court Woes

January 9, 2014 By
 
Another example of how off-the-radar our civil courts crisis can be: The once-anticipated Los Angeles 2020 Commission report of “A City In Crisis” does not include those long lines at the courthouse or the slow dismantling of our juvenile and community courthouse system. Indeed, after reading the Los Angeles Times review of our city’s crisis, you realize that our “paper of record” has taken a harder look at the crackdown on jaywalking than on the civil courts.
 
Granted, that may be because you have to connect the dots. Superior Courts funding is a “state issue,” until it becomes a police issue, a landlord-renter issue, a business development issue, an economic recruitment issue – in other words, until it disrupts the stuff that forces headlines. Reviews of the 20-page report, actually billed as “part one,” have been harsh, with the L.A. Weekly calling it “a mess” and noting that the group complains that the city leadership “… suffers from a crisis in leadership and direction” before saying “… it’s clear that this report is suffering from a crisis in leadership and direction, as it bogs down in the same old thinking. Whether this condition also applies to the city’s leaders is impossible to know, as the report does not analyze, address or acknowledge anything that any particular city leader has done about any of these issues.”
 
The “independent commission,” chaired by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor, is comprised of 13 men and women and was set up after voters turned down a recent city tax increase. An L.A. Times opinion piece ran down the crisis list: “The city, according to the report, is afflicted with weak job growth; high poverty; bad traffic; underperforming schools; weak, inactive government; red tape that stifles economic development; crumbling infrastructure; unfunded pensions; budget gimmicks and a disaffected electorate… Los Angeles is sinking into a future in which it no longer can provide the public services to which our people’s taxes entitle them and where the promises made to public employees about a decent and secure retirement simply cannot be kept.”
 
It’s lively reading, but perhaps frustrating to anyone hoping that rationed justice can receive the same attention as the live-altering use of budget gimmicks.
 
 
 
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Chief Justice, Budget Plans Sketched In Report

January 7, 2014 By

One of those end-of-year “people to watch” features is hardly the stuff of investigative journalism, but a piece in The Tribune newspaper in San Luis Obispo outlines at least part of the upcoming judicial budget battles. The feature on California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye is mostly glowing, but is among the few to note that early budget drafts exclude court budget increases.

The story is also one of the few that notes a specific number that the chief justice will seek from the legislature, although it is an indirect reference: “With those priorities in mind, Cantil-Sakauye is making a serious push for increased funding in the next fiscal year: another $472 million, which is about how much has cumulatively been cut from the judiciary’s budget since 2008.”

That report adds that “… that could be an uphill battle: Assembly Speaker John A. Perez released a blueprint budget plan earlier this month that included no new appropriations for the judiciary…” Read more here. 
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U.S. Chief Justice Pleads For More Funding, Warns Of Constitutional Issues

January 6, 2014 By
The new year began with a New Year’s Eve warning from U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts that sounds a lot like a federal version of what California has been going through for several years. In effect, the Chief Justice is warning that court cutbacks are threatening access to justice, especially when it comes to public defenders and other rights guaranteed by the constitution.
 
This is not exactly new. Chief Justice Roberts has repeatedly warned of funding problems, especially those caused by the so-called sequestration cuts. But this warning comes a few weeks after two top officials from the nation’s Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts issued similar warnings.
 
As usual, the debate focuses on criminal courts but civil court delays were also noted. The Chief Justice wrote that “… in the civil and bankruptcy venues, further consequences would include commercial uncertainty, lost opportunities, and unvindicated rights. In the criminal venues, those consequences pose a genuine threat to public safety.”
 
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Judicial Reporter Offers Stark 2013 Recap

December 31, 2013 By

For anyone dealing with rationed justice in 2013, it felt like a nearly constant barrage of bad news. Now Bill Girdner at The Courthouse News offers a year-in-review piece that quickly reminds us why – because it was a barrage of bad news. The story begins with “… it was a news-filled year for the courts in California, as they survived huge budget cuts and walked backwards on transparency and slightly forward on reform as the Legislature told them to open a warren of closed committees.”

He notes the budget cutting and that it was considered a “reprieve” when the governor decided not to cut the budget even more. He even recalls when In “… an old scandal returned as the council over-rode objections from judges and allowed telecommutingby the highly paid mandarins of the Administrative Office of the Courts… in a companion decision, the council voted to take a look at the salaries of those same bureaucrats but later decided that the inquiry should be conducted by the bureaucrats themselves. As the year winds down, the inquiry seems to have stalled.”

And maybe this slipped by in the holiday rush, but Girdner recalls that “… in December, the council elevated its technology committee to the status of internal committee, igniting a blast from judges who said the leaders of the tech committee and its task force had “proven themselves incompetent” and should be replaced.”

In terms of the legal community, it reads less like the summary of a year-in-review and more like an indictment. See the story here.

(Program Note: The CCM will not update tomorrow as we observe the New Year’s holiday)

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Superior Courts, And Facilities, Ranked On Yelp? Yep

December 30, 2013 By
If it’s good enough for restaurants and car repairs, it’s good enough for the justice system. The consumer-review site Yelp! is becoming a place to review courts and the facilities that house them. As you might suspect, any survey involves people venting a bit about long lines and less-than-perfect outcomes, but some courts get (perhaps) surprisingly high ratings and some of the insights would be helpful to those about to visit the courts – like that some courthouses are less busy on Thursday, or when specific traffic court workers are out for lunch.
 
An example of relatively glowing reviews is the Los Angeles County Superior Court at Chatsworth in the northwestern San Fernando Valley. With more than two dozen reviews it achieves a three-of-five star rating. Those panning the facility echoed problems from across the system: long lines. A typical complaint from Chatsworth, was “… I tried for several hours yesterday afternoon — and for another half hour this morning — to simply reserve a court date.  All total, that process took approximately three hours.” 
 
But they love their free parking! You can find specific courts by searching Yelp, and the Chatsworth comments are here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , ,

‘Top Hellhole’ Ranking Sparks Some Debate

December 27, 2013 By
There’s not much balance in most online coverage of California’s latest “Judicial Hellhole” ranking, but there’s a good exception at the Law360 website. Their report notes that the ranking by the American Tort Reform Association doesn’t tell “the whole story,” but offers strong comments from people on both sides of the debate.
 
For example, Law360 writes that “… the report focuses too heavily on a minority of abusive cases, according to Brian Kabateck,” who is identified as a former president of the Consumer Attorneys of California. The quote continues that “… this report is coming from a coalition of corporations and big businesses and insurance companies. They are taking a very small number of clearly abusive lawsuits, and they are trying to use that as a smoke screen to shield themselves from liability for their bad actions and their injurious conduct directed at Californians.”
 
But other experts point out that other states have taken measures to clear up clogged court systems and California could learn a thing or two from their experiences. William Oxley, a partner at one of the state’s larger firms who is identified as an attorney “… who defends companies in asbestos cases and other product liability and mass tort cases” said he agreed that California is a more plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction, and thought the Legislature and the California Supreme Court need to take action to balance the playing field.
 
We do not typically link to paid websites, but this one offers free access for seven days with registration. So here’s the link.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Democrat Budget Blueprint Ignores Court Crisis

December 26, 2013 By
We’ve been noting that the early plans for our next state budget do not exactly place civil courts funding in the “crisis” category. Indeed, the courts in general are, at best, being placed on the back-burner – even the criminal courts which have a higher political profile than civil justice. The latest example is the recently released “budget blueprint” released by the Democratic Caucus of the state assembly.
 
In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times described the document thus: “Top Assembly Democrats have revealed what they’d like to do with billions of dollars in extra tax revenue that the state is projected to receive, and their top priorities were reassuring: expanding the reserve fund and paying down the debts that Sacramento accumulated over the last decade. Their budget blueprint also calls for a lot of new spending on education and anti-poverty programs, however.”
 
The most passionate appeal for any justice-related funding in the “blueprint” comes amid plans to reduce spending on prison housing. There, the “collaborative justice” efforts get some attention, but that’s hardly noting a billion dollars of court cuts over the past five years. Certainly, most of the issues getting attention are worthy – yet you have to wonder how long we can expect courthouse-related labor unions and others to sit by while the Democrats ignore their concerns. 
 
Read the Times editorial here.
Find the Blueprint here.
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