After Layoffs, L.A. Courts Hiring Again – Judges That Is

July 29, 2013 By
After laying off more than 100 justice workers over the past month and eliminating hundreds more positions, the Los Angeles Superior Court has announced a half-dozen new hires for some $178,789-per-year jobs. Gov. Brown announced the appointment of six new judges last week, including two Superior Court commissioners, one former public defender and two prosecutors.
 
In one of the ironies of the justice rationing system, judges are protected in their jobs. Yet some have complained that they are actually not that effective due to staff cutbacks. Most judges begin their time on the bench after a governor’s appointment, and while they then face “election” most never face serious opposition.
 
The new judges are Loyd C. Loomis, Nicole C. Bershon, Beverly L. Bourne, Rupa S. Goswami, Curtis A. Kin and Teresa T. Sullivan. You can read more about them here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Courthouse cutbacks create hardships for man with disabilities

July 26, 2013 By

By Sara Warner

 
ORIGINAL REPORTING: CCM publisher Sara Warner profiles Mr. Femi Collins, a disabled engineer who has become one of the L.A. County citizens impacted directly by closing of local courthouses.
Mr. Femi Collins, a disabled engineer who has become one of the L.A. County citizens impacted directly by closing of local courthouses. (Photo by Sara Warner)

Mr. Femi Collins, a disabled engineer who has become one of the L.A. County citizens impacted directly by closing of local courthouses. (Photo by Sara Warner)


When you are blind, the difference between 4 miles and 27 miles in Los Angeles can be dramatic. Here is Mr. Collins’ story.
 
Femi Collins came to the United States from Nigeria in 1973. He was seeking a better life for himself, his future American wife, and his future nine children. To Mr. Collins the United States offered a future free of political instability and equality for all under the law.
 

After graduating with a BS and MS from Cal Poly Pomona University, Mr. Collins pursued a career in Engineering.  With an advancing career as an engineer and a growing, supportive family, Mr. Collins personified the “American Dream” – until a disability changed his life.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Community, Profiles Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Bay Area TV Report Hits Hard On Court Delays, Funding

July 24, 2013 By

The NBC affiliated TV station in San Francisco has broadcast a strong story about court delays due to ongoing budget cuts, including a court critic who notes that the judicial administrators are partly to blame for poor spending decsions. The “Bay Area Investigative Unit” found delays in every one of California’s 58 Superior Court systems and documented backlogs that included 30,000 documents stacked on one court’s floor awaiting proper filing.

Among the hard-hit are family courts, and the Investigative Unit reported the story of a Contra Costa County family court custody dispute for more than three years, leaving five and seven year old kids in legal limbo.

“I see my children,” the mother involved in the custody battle told the station. “They cry for me.”

Watch the report here. (Editor’s note: the print version on the website is a bit different from the video, which includes more details.)

 

 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Coastal Lawsuit Backup Shows 1,837-Case, 20-year Backlog

July 23, 2013 By
 
What happens when the Superior Courts civil dockets get really, really backed up? In effect, the rule of law is suspended; there’s a great example of that with the California Coastal Commission, which can’t actually levy fines but uses lawsuits to enforce regulations. But, in a must-read story, the San Jose Mercury News says the state agency now faces “… 1,837 backlogged cases, some dating back 20 years.”
The newspaper says that the cases “… range from wealthy Malibu residents putting up illegal “no parking” signs to block families from public beaches to a company suspected of illegally mining sand on Monterey County beaches to property owners dumping debris on the shoreline in rural Del Norte County.” And there’s a bill in Sacramento that would allow the commission to levy its own fines, like the Fish & Wildlife or air quality agencies. 
 
So you can take your pick: The new law would finally give the commission “some teeth” or it could bypass the civil justice system in favor of another fine-producing state board. But as other issues face the slowness of Superior Courts, you can bet this illustrates a trend away from having “your day in court.” Read the story here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Report: ‘Sad State’ Of Courts Will Boost Arbitration

July 16, 2013 By
While noting that non-court arbitration has often been seen as anti-consumer, a report in the member-run news organization Voice of San Diego lays out a good argument that ongoing court cuts will boost the practice. It also cites a recent study noting that formerly routine business collection practices can take up to a year, making it difficult to do business in counties hard-hit by court delays.
 
“Historically, we have seen that people who want to tilt the playing field in their favor will use delay in the trial courts as a justification for that,” one official told the website. “It has less resonance where cases get to trial efficiently and quickly as they had up until this latest round of five years of budget cuts.”
 
We have already heard that justice system administrators are urging a “settle the case” approach to ease strain on the diminished system, and certainly arbitration is part of that rationing strategy. This is a good, balanced look at how that’s starting to play out: Read Here. 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Closing Of Local Courthouses Amounts To Theft

July 11, 2013 By
Closing local courthouses amounts to theft, says the noted left-leaning reporter James Preston Allen, publisher of the San Pedro-based “Random Lengths News” newspaper. To support the claim, he turns to both the state public records law and some old fashioned arithmetic.
 
Writes Allen: “In April of this year, this newspaper filed a public records request with the Los Angeles Superior Court and found that the total monies collected from fees and fines at both the Avalon and San Pedro courts amounted to over $4.5 million per year. In fact, in fiscal year 2010-11 the total collected was a whopping $4,885,772. It would seem that of this gross amount, someone might figure out how to keep the courthouse doors open. But no, this is not the reality. The reason why the court can’t afford to keep doing business is that out of all these revenues collected, the State of California takes 54 percent, the county takes 37 percent and the cities receive 6 percent. And the court? In 2010-11, the court received a paltry one percent,or $48,857.52.” 
 
The writer, in his “At Length” column, says that he is “… personally and profoundly amazed by the indifference shown by the business community, most of the Council District 15 neighborhood councils and the legal profession who have all acquiesced to this abridgment of the public’s right to fair and equal access to the law. Not to mention the loss of 50 well paid jobs and requisite traffic to the court that generates business in the area.”
 
His headline is “Theft of the Courthouse” and you can read it here.
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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