civil court

Rich Sue, Poor Don’t In Downsized Courts

August 19, 2014 By CCM Staff

Under the downsized and more expensive California court systems, officials are reporting that some types of cases like probate, mental health, dependency, personal injury, property damage, and wrongful death claims continue increasing. But public-access civil cases like small claims, where there’s no attorney involved, are decreasing.

In a solid story from The Reporter newspaper in Vacaville, a Sacramento-area community in Solano County, we learn that “… in a statement issued along with a summary of the report, Justice Douglas Miller, chair of the Judicial Council’s Executive and Planning Committee, called the trend in court filings worrisome [saying] “… it coincides with two other trends that have occurred as result of budget cuts to the judicial branch: the increase in court filing fees to offset General Fund budget cuts and closure of courthouses and/or the reduction of hours at our courthouses. It’s something that we in the judicial branch are very concerned about,” Miller said in a statement.

One concern is that, with diminished hours, increased costs and the challenge of traveling to farther-away court houses, that people who would have normally turned to courts would simply give up. The report can certainly be read to support that claim.

See the story here: Decrease in court filings, rise in costs a concern to court officials

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, California, California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, civil court, Civil Courts, court rationing, justice denied, Justice Rationing

2-Year-Old Taken From Court Found Unharmed

July 25, 2014 By CCM Staff

BREAKING NEWS: The Associated Press is citing the City News Service in reporting that the 2-year-old girl abducted Wednesday by her parents during a family court custody hearing “has been found unharmed in Arizona.” The AP explains that “… the grandmother of Mariah Salguero was granted temporary custody of the child at the court proceeding Wednesday morning. Shortly afterward, police say, the child’s parents took the girl out of the courtroom.”

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: abduction, child abduction, child custody, civil court, family court

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

July 15, 2014 By CCM Staff

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.”

ACLU Leader Outlines Immigration Lawsuit Argument

July 11, 2014 By CCM Staff

As reported by NPR: Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed at a U.S. Customs facility in Nogales, Texas.

With armed “citizen groups” starting to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border and angry crowds protesting the arrival of children into their communities, the ongoing “unaccompanied children immigration” crisis is growing worse. Clearly, this is a tragic worst-case example of what happens with “rationing justice” in our civil courts, and California has the biggest caseload backup with tens of thousands of kids awaiting a day in court.

In a major Los Angeles Times opinion piece, the director of the ACLU of Southern California outlines theories behind this week’s lawsuit against the U.S. Government, filed by his group and other civil rights groups. Among other issues, the groups argue for legal representation, saying that

“… the appointment of counsel is the only way to ensure that children with potentially valid claims can present the necessary arguments and proof. Given the complexities of immigration law and the language and cultural barriers immigrants face, it should surprise no one that attorneys matter in immigration proceedings. A 2012 study of New York immigration courts showed that immigrants who proceed without representation are five times more likely to lose their cases than those who have counsel.”

The ACLU director also argues that, while we may use the term “immigration,” these children are more accurately classified as refugees fleeing for their lives. These are the emerging talking points on the escalating crisis, and you can find them here: Kids caught at the border deserve due process, including lawyers

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: ACLU, armed citizen groups, border patrol, california courts, child immigration, civil court, court backlog, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, immigration, Mexico, refugee, Southern California ACLU

Writer Recaps Court Budget Situation

July 7, 2014 By CCM Staff

Much-watched Sacramento Bee Columnist Dan Walters, whose ideas go well beyond the state capitol, has published a good recap of the state’s court situation, outlining the recent history of shifting state funding from local to state authorities and concluding that: “Bottom line: The shift to state support was supposed to bring financial stability to the courts but instead has brought much higher instability.”

He offers this quick history: “When the Legislature and then-Gov. Pete Wilson agreed in 1997 that the state would assume the entire cost of financing California’s largest-in-the-nation court system, judges rejoiced… it was a big win for Ron George, whom Wilson had appointed as the state’s chief justice a year earlier, and he hailed ‘a stable and adequate source of funding’ as ‘one of the most important reforms in the California justice systems in the 20th century.'”

Walters also observes that “… the impact is being felt mostly on the civil side of courts because criminal cases command priority for restricted judicial resources. It can take literally years for a civil case to get a trial date.”

It’s a good read, but also a good story to file away for newcomers to how things got this way. Read it via the Mercury News here Dan Walters: California courts sought stability, found instability

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, california court cuts, california courts, California Legislature, California State Budget, civil court, court cuts, Dan Walters

Brown Appoints Presiding Judges

July 1, 2014 By CCM Staff

The MetNews is reporting that Gov. Jerry Brown has named Court of Appeal Justice Frances Rothschild as presiding justice of this Los Angeles Div. One, and proposed three judges of other courts for appointment to other divisions. The website says that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brian M. Hoffstadt will be nominated as associate justice in Div. Two, former Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Presiding Judge Lee S. Edmon as presiding justice in Div. Three, and U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins as associate justice in Div. Four.

Read the report, with background on the newly appointed and their confirmation process, here: Brown Names Rothschild and Edmon Presiding Justices of C.A.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California, california court cuts, california courts, civil court, Civil Courts, Court of Appeals, Gov. Jerry Brown, Judges

Presiding Judge: Justice Rationing To Continue

June 24, 2014 By CCM Staff

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.”

Read his comments at KHTS News: Court Officials Decry Budget, Say Delays Will Continue

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, civil court, court budget, court rationing, Judge David Wesley

Budget Losers Now Learning The Score

June 18, 2014 By CCM Staff

Court system leadership may be fairly silent about this election-year budget deal, but the people actually dealing with ongoing shortfalls are starting to figure out that they were left out. Take child welfare courts, for example, where officials had expected modest increases, as noted in the Chronicle of Social Change website: “The California State Assembly and Senate had both signed off on a modest pot of money earmarked to help children’s legal representatives reduce caseloads that have grown to more than 400 children per lawyer in some counties… the state would have doled out $11 million in funding over the next year to help lower caseloads in child-welfare courts, followed by $22 million in the second year and $33 million in the third year. However, that money vanished in the final version of the budget that was sent to the Gov. Jerry Brown (D) for approval on Sunday [June 15].

You can hear discontent rising, but we are told many individual operations are being told to hold their fire because they might be among those lucky few getting some of the modest increases. But as those promises fade, it will be interesting to see what happens. Read some reaction here: California Rejects Bid to Restore Funding for Child Welfare Courts

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, child lawyers, child welfare, civil court, court rationing, juvenile courts, juvenile justice

Courts Budget Too Little, Too Wait

June 17, 2014 By CCM Staff

Those long wait times and delayed justice are not likely to go away anytime soon, given this year’s state budget focus on Gov. Brown’s bullet train project and increased education funding, say the early reviews of the just-passed spending plan. Says The Courthouse News: “… [the] $156 billion budget California lawmakers passed Sunday gave a $40 million boost to courthouse construction, but fell far short of the $266 million the judiciary hoped to raise for the trial courts this year… Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye unveiled in January a “budget blueprint” for the courts that set a $1.2 billion funding goal over the next three years, with $266 million more needed this year just to stay afloat.

Also from TCN: “We are nowhere near adequate funding of the [justice] system and nowhere even their own treading water mark, and that’s unfortunate,” Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, R-Camarillo, said on Sunday. “This budget simply does not focus on the priorities that Californians have set.”

What’s less clear is what political price, if any, lawmakers will pay for putting the courts on the budget back-burner.

See the story here: Courthouse News Service

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: california court cuts, california courts, California Courts Budget, California Rail, California State Budget, California Train, civil court, court cuts, court rationing, Gov. Jerry Brown

After Fed Court Ruling, ICE Detainee Requests Go Unheeded

June 6, 2014 By CCM Staff

Reflecting on the fact that many immigration detentions are civil, rather than criminal, actions, more than 100 jurisdictions across the United States have stopped enforcing “holds” issued by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE. The policy changes follow a federal court ruling in Oregon declaring such practices unconstitutional.

More than a dozen of the counties changing the practice are in California, including Los Angeles and San Diego, where authorities have stopped complying with the ICE detainer requests, reports the Orange County Register. The newspaper quotes Julia Harumi Mass, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Northern California: “Detaining people based on suspected civil immigration violations without probable cause not only wastes scarce local public safety resources and contradicts our sense of fairness – it undeniably violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

Read the Register report by Roxana Kopetman here.

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, National Tagged With: ACLU, civil court, court rationing, ICE, ICE detainer requests, immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Legal news