Civil Courts

Making A Business Case For Fully Funding Courts

October 13, 2014 By CCM Staff

An opinion piece in The Boston Globe is the latest to make the business case for a well-funded justice system. It cites a recent white paper that illustrates how “… inadequate funding of the state court system has an adverse impact on the economy as a whole.” It also notes the oft-cited Los Angeles study documenting billions of dollars in economic losses.

The column argues that “… efforts to quantify the economic harm caused by underfunding have revealed staggering losses. For example, a 2009 Micronomics Group study of the County of Los Angeles revealed that superior court budget deficits of between $79 million and $140 million would result in economic losses greater than $59 billion. Other studies have shown similar results. Given the established correlation between underfunding and economic loss, why would we ever choose not to fully fund and staff our state courts?”

Read about making the case here: A penny for Massachusetts courts – The Boston Globe

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: Boston Globe, Civil Courts, court budget, court cuts, court rationing, Massacbusetts courts, Massachusetts

‘Jerk Bill’ Takes Aim At Attorney Bad Behavior

September 24, 2014 By CCM Staff

A business-backed bill that takes aim at certain attorney behavior, typically tactics that show disrespect or are designed to delay the courts, has been signed into law by Gov. Brown, the Sacramento Business Journal is reporting. Backers of the bill argued that, along with giving judges a tool to regulate attorneys, the new law will conserve court resources.

The BizJ quotes the president of the Civil Justice Association of California, or CJAC, saying that “…prior to this bill, courts had tools to sanction lawyers who brought frivolous lawsuits but not sanctions if they behaved badly,” said . “Now, if the filing is legit, but the lawyer is behaving like a jerk, the court can smack them with the other side’s legal fees.”

Read the report here:

http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2014/09/24/governor-signs-bill-frivolous-court-behavior-calif.html

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: "bad Attorney", ABA, California Bar Association, california courts, Civil Courts, civil justice, Civil Justice Association of California, Gov. Jerry Brown, Legal news

Award-Winning Courthouse Closes After Just 4 Years

September 22, 2014 By CCM Staff

Just four years after its opened amid much fanfare, one of California’s most scenic courthouses has become another victim of the state’s justice rationing, slated to close Nov. 3. A Plumas County News report quotes Plumas Superior Court Executive Officer Deborah Norrie saying that “… the trial courts have lost a billion dollars (in funding) in the last few years. The Plumas court has taken its fair share of hits.”

Known for its award winning design, Portola Courthouse is facing closure.

Plumas County, a Sierra Nevada community located near the Nevada border in northwestern California, has now lost three of its four court facilities, the newspaper noted, with the Greenville court closing in 2012 and Chester’s court closing last year. All cases in Plumas County will now be processed and heard at the Quincy courthouse, but with reduced court hours. The paper reported that, beginning Nov. 3, the court will be open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Phones will be answered from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The Portola courthouse won design awards and looks more like a ski area entrance than a traditional court building. It is owned by the state judicial system and it remains unclear what, if anything, will be done with the 6,500 square foot building. Local judges say they hope it reopens as a courthouse when funding is restored.

Budget cuts force closure of Portola courthouse

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, California, California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, California Superior Court, Chief Justice, civil court, Civil Courts, court rationing, Plumas County, Sierra Nevada

Writer Calls Out U.S. Policy On Border-Children Crisis

August 29, 2014 By CCM Staff

The writer Ruben Navarrette is citing MLK and Democratic governors in a new CNN piece that also says the Obama Administration is misleading the public about what is actually happening to unaccompanied Central American children seeking refuge in the United States.

Navarette, who is also a Daily Beast online columnist and syndicated nationally via the Washington Post Writers Group, begins by citing the civil rights icon: “In his epic ‘Letter from the Birmingham Jail,’ the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ But now that the Obama administration is fast-tracking the deportation of thousands of undocumented minors, perhaps hoping to get rid of them before the November elections, it’s clear that expedited justice is just as bad.”

The writer adds that, “… despite the President’s claim that there is no rush in returning the children and due process would be preserved, the reality is much different. Kids are given court dates they can’t possibly be expected to make — often in another state. Many don’t have lawyers. Deportation cases are being rushed through the pipeline.”

He also suggests that the crisis might become a 2016 presidential election issue, noting that “… Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a possible contender for the Democratic nomination in 2016, warned that the administration was giving the migrant children death sentences. O’Malley told a gathering of the National Governors Association in Nashville, Tennessee: ‘We are not a country that should turn children away and send them back to certain death.'”

It is one of the strongest indictments yet of how the U.S. is handling the crisis, and you can read it at CNN here: Fast-tracking children to possible death

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, Refugee Children Tagged With: 2014 election, access to justice, Civil Courts, CNN, court rationing, election, immigration, immigration reform, midterm elections, Obama, refugee children, refugee kids

Immigration Court Scrutiny Brings Cries For Chance

August 28, 2014 By CCM Staff

Those tens of thousands of border children seeking asylum in the United States have shed light on the nation’s immigration courts, and it’s hard to like what we’re seeing. Now, the leaders of the National Association of Immigration Judges are calling on Congress to crate what many of us though we had all along – an independent immigration court system. It turns out that the “court” is actually part of law enforcement, in effect a division of the Department of Justice.

That means, for example, that immigration judges cannot hold federal prosecutors from the Department of Homeland Security in contempt of court because judges are considered to be lawyers working for the Justice Department. Erin Kelly, of the Gannett Washington Bureau, writing in USA Today, has a great report that quotes Judge Dana Leigh Marks, a San Francisco-based immigration judge and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges: “We need an independent immigration court system which stands on its own. Enforcement should not be allowed to control courts.”

See the story here: Immigration judges call for reform

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, Civil Courts, court cuts, court rationing, immigration, immigration reform, justice denied, Justice Rationing, refugee children, refugee kids

A lawyer makes the case for Civil Gideon

August 22, 2014 By CCM Staff

A big part of the border crisis involving unaccompanied minors from Central America is legal representation. If the refugees have legal representation, they tend to remain in the United States. Without legal representation, most are sent back. But if they should have representation in what remains a civil action, who else should?

A lawyer makes the case for a “civil Gideon” on page 3 in our print edition. Read it here!

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: access to justice, access to legal counsel, Civil Courts, Civil gideon, indigent legal services, legal representation

L.A. Moves To Disassemble Part Of ‘School-To-Prison Pipeline’

August 20, 2014 By CCM Staff

As the nation watches racially heated events in Ferguson, Missouri unfold, the city of Los Angeles is going about disassembling what critics have called its “schools-to-prison” pipeline, ending policies that turned school issues into police issues. But the move is also a consequence of reduced juvenile court capacity, according to an official quoted in a New York Times article.

According to the NYT: “Michael Nash, the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Juvenile Courts, who was involved in creating the new policies, said that the juvenile justice system was overtaxed, and that the changes would ensure that the courts were dealing only with youngsters who ‘really pose the greatest risk to the community.'”

The NYT also reported that “… students 14 years old and under received more than 45 percent of the district’s 1,360 citations in 2013, according to the [Labor/Community] Strategy Center [a civil rights group] African-American students, who account for about 10 percent of the total population, received 39 percent of “disturbing the peace” citations, typically given for fights.” At one time, police in the program were issuing arrest citations for showing up late to school, a practice terminated in 2012.

Read the NY Times story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California Corrections, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, Civil Courts, court rationing, criminal justice system, juvenile court, juvenile detention, LA County Juvenile Court, Los Angeles courts, Los Angeles School System, minorities, school reform, school to prison pipeline

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

‘Rocket Dockets’ Set For Border-Children Immigration

August 13, 2014 By CCM Staff

The federal government is creating “rocket dockets” to process unaccompanied border children, hoping to slow the flow of children by showing a policy of quick returns. Critics are responding that the new practice moves too quickly in a system inadequate to provide legally required court oversight and without a system for legal representation.

The U.K.-based Guardian newspaper has a good overview, reporting that “.. under normal rules, the recent arrivals would have queued at the tail-end of a backlogged system where migrants wait months or years for hearings at overstretched immigration courts… instead, with Republicans accusing the president of neglecting border security, the administration vaulted the newly arrived children to the front of the line, and said they would have initial court hearings within 21 days.”

They also cite a California-based critic: “We appreciate the government’s attempt to deal with these [new] cases expeditiously, but not to this extreme. We think 21 days is too fast. Maybe 60 days would be preferable,” said Caitlin Sanderson, director of the Los Angeles-based Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, which has staff attorneys representing about 270 children pro bono.

See the story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: border crisis, california courts, civil court backlog, Civil Courts, deportation, Immigrant Children, immigration, immigration reform, refugee children, The Guardian

D.C. And L.A. Getting More ‘Border Children’

August 8, 2014 By CCM Staff

The Los Angeles Times is breaking down where the children caught illegally crossing the border are going, noting that cities like Washington with large populations from the originating countries are getting the most newcomers. The Times says reports that D.C. “… is home to an estimated 165,000 Salvadoran immigrants, the nation’s second-largest population after the Los Angeles area’s 275,000, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The capital region had 42,000 immigrants from Guatemala and 30,000 from Honduras.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families reports that 2,234 unaccompanied minors were released to sponsors in Virginia between Jan. 1 and July 7, ranking the state fifth after Texas, New York, Florida and California. It’s not noted in the story, but those numbers are expected to accelerate as tens of thousands of children being held are processed into the Immigration Court system.

Read the report here: Amid border crisis debate, many new immigrants land in D.C. area

Filed Under: Border Kids, Community, Courts Budget, National Tagged With: border crisis, california courts, Civil Courts, court backlog, refugee children, refugee kids, Unaccompanied Children