Chino Newspaper Calls For Court Changes

January 24, 2014 By
 
The Chino Champion newspaper is among the local media organizations taking notice of civil justice rationing, and it has a proposal: Return the statewide courts system to local control. The paper writes that “… the court system is being squeezed to where it no longer serves the public as it should. Chino Valley residents have experienced the effects of its superior court closure, a move that adds costly hours or days to participants, whether they are plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses or jurors.”
 
The result, the Champion argues, is that relatively simple issues like code enforcement or traffic citations become more trouble than they are worth, both for government and residents. The suggestion: “we have advocated before that the courts return to the less expensive locally-based system to handle up to 90 percent of the matters such as traffic, small claims and custody orders which now clog the superior court system. This would be one step in restoring a sense of justice to the people.”
 
Read the editorial here.
 
Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: , , , ,

Court Delays Hitting Mentally Ill Defendants

January 21, 2014 By
 
Nobody has to tell civil courts advocates that some court functions enjoy more political attention and funding priority than others. But there’s increasing concern that mentally incompetent defendants are being stuck in county jails because there are just not enough hospital beds available, at least not ones designed for treating the mentally ill. Of course, the system is creating a revolving door as the lack of treatment leads people right back to local jails.
 
The San Luis Obispo Tribune has one of the better local stories about the trend, which is shaping up as a key issue for the upcoming state budget battle. Recent federal court rulings have increased focus on mental health under Obamacare, and these cases are sure to gain priority. The Tribune explains the situation: “The problem is particularly notable for defendants declared incompetent to stand trial. Competent defendants understand the charges against them and can assist their attorneys in their defense. If an attorney doesn’t think a client can do that, he declares a doubt in court. At that point, psychiatric evaluations are ordered. If a judge deems the defendant incompetent, the case is suspended, and the defendant is ordered to undergo treatment until competency is restored.” Except backlogs and cutbacks make that process nearly impossible,
 
Read the report here.
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Courts Seek Savings With Jury Selection

January 17, 2014 By
 
The latest proposal from the California Judges Association to cut costs? How about lowering the number of no-reason jury dismissals from 10 to only five for misdemeanors? Supporters of that idea are asking state lawmakers to make the change via a bill, SB794, introduced by Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa.  
 

The Judge’s Association says the move would save $1.2 million per year for the courts, but a whopping $30 million or more for the prospective jurors, their employers and their communities, according to a report in SFGate. They also report that about 1.5 million Californians report for jury duty each year. It is unclear what impact the move would have on civil trials, where jury capacity is an increasingly touchy topic.

Check out the details here.

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

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.
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‘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.
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