Gov. Jerry Brown

Chief Justice: We’re Basically Denying Justice

October 21, 2013 By CCM Staff

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (Photo: California Courts)

California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye continues to make the kind of statements you just know have to eventually fuel legal action: either that or it’s basically okay to offer one justice system to the rich and another to everyone else.

In an audio interview with with Scott Shafer of The California Report produced by KQED, the chief justice says the state is “basically denying justice” to people by creating “a two-tiered system.” She also tells host Scott Shafer that Gov. Brown is basically overseeing a sea change in California justice, including moving inmates to county jails or onto the streets.

It’s strong stuff and you can listen here.

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

Gov. Brown Vetoes Limits On Court Outsourcing

October 15, 2013 By CCM Staff

By MARIA DINZEO

In a move bound to be greeted as anti-labor by union leadership, California Gov. Jerry Brown has vetoed a bill that would have required any courthouse-job outsourcing to include proof that it would actually save money. In effect, unions representing court workers had argued that outsourcing simply moved public money into private pockets.

In his veto announcement Monday, Gov. Brown said the bill went too far and required “… California’s courts to meet overly-detailed and — in some cases — nearly impossible requirements when entering into or renewing certain contracts.” He also said “flexibility” was part of his decision.

As Courthouse News noted in its coverage, the bill was primarily backed by the California Court Reporters Association and the Service Employees International Union and was considered a response to Placer County Superior Court’s firing of its entire court reporter staff and replacement with private contractors. Read the CN story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California, California Budget, california court cuts, california courts, California State Budget, court rationing, Gov. Jerry Brown, Justice Rationing, lay-offs, SEIU, union

Judge Says Court Closures May Bring Violence

October 11, 2013 By CCM Staff

Reduced access to civil courts will mean that people take the law into their own hands, including using violence in their disputes, according to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. Phil Mautino, who is the supervising judge for the Los Padrinos Juvenile Court, told a Republican Lincoln Club group that personal injury cases are going to take five years to get to trial while for traffic court “there’s a line that circles around the building.”

“It means if you’re not going to court, you settle (the issue privately). It means violence. It’s like the old days of vengeance where if you kill my brother, I’ll kill your sister,” the judge told the Whittier Daily News in a recent report. “If you‘re willing to stand in line for a day or two, the officer may not show up [and] if you’re retired and plead not guilty, you have might have a good chance of getting off.”

The Whittier courthouse was among the eight closed this year while two others have very limited services. All traffic court cases now are heard at the downtown Los Angeles and Beverly Hills court houses, small claims is limited to five courts (Downey for the Whittier area), and landlord-tenant evictions are divided between four courthouses.

See the story here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California Corrections, california court cuts, california courts, court rationing, court safety, court violence, domestic violence, Gov. Jerry Brown, Judges, justice denied, Justice Rationing, violence

Gov. Signs Law, Illegal Immigrants Can Become Lawyers

October 10, 2013 By CCM Staff

Surprising nobody, Gov. Brown has signed legislation that allows an illegal immigrant to become an attorney — if they have gained the proper academic credentials and passed the state bar. The law comes after a Chico man named Sergio Garcia, a law school graduate who has awaited a green card for almost 10 years, appealed his license denial all the way to the state supreme court.

The Obama administration had opposed the idea, arguing that federal immigration law blocks such professional licensing unless states pass a specific law allowing law licenses for illegal immigrants. Stumped, the state’s supreme court judges asked the legislature to adopt such a law and it did, leading to Brown’s signature this week.

Gov. Considering Major Court-Outsourcing Bill

October 3, 2013 By CCM Staff

The civil courts community is keeping focus on a bill that would regulate how the California courts outsource their functions. The bill, AB 556, passed both the assembly and state senate with comfortable margins but now awaits Gov. Brown’s signature to become law.

The debate, noted in The Courthouse News, boils down to how administrators want to replace court workers with contract employees. Presiding Judge Laurie Earl of Sacramento said in an interview with CN, “In our opinion this bill is an overreach, not only into our discretion but into good business practices to reduce costs at a time when we have less funding.” But, the report notes, “… from the labor point of view, contracting simply transfers public funds into private hands.”

“What you’re doing is exchanging wages and benefits for employees for a for-profit company,” said Michelle Castro with the union that represents many court workers. “The courts aren’t going to pay less money.” In its language, the CN notes, the bill conditions private contracts on a demonstration of savings.

You can read the report here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: AB 556, California, California Budget, california court cuts, California State Budget, California Supreme Court, Gov. Jerry Brown, Justice Rationing

Long Beach Courts Move To New Public-Private Built Building

September 20, 2013 By CCM Staff

In an era of closing courthouses, a new one has opened. The $340 million, 531,000 square foot facility opened this week near the five-decades-old courthouse it’s replacing. It features two dozen courtrooms and will no doubt raise debate over how to pay for improved facilities. That is because it is the first to be built as a public-private partnership, complete with retail space.

The new Gov. George Deukmejian Courthouse in Long Beach. (Photo was published in the Los Angeles Times article “No rats and no lines, new Long Beach courthouse opens for business” on September 9, 2013.)

The deal is that a group of real estate developers actually build the courthouse, paying for construction up front, and the state pays the cost plus interest over the next 35 years. Some critics of California’s court management say the public-private deal illustrates that the state is not all that great at building things. The Los Angeles Times covered the courthouse opening without noting the massive cost overruns of the state-only construction effort, but it did note that staffers were pushing leather chairs from one courthouse to the next.

Check out the story here.

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

Courts Praised For Decisions On Prop. 65 Cases

September 10, 2013 By CCM Staff

It’s not every day you get a significant insurance recovery firm singing the praises of California’s justice system. Yet firms like Proskauer Rose LLP are doing just that in the wake of some judicial decisions. In a web-posted story headlined “California Judiciary, Not Governor, Leading Effort To Reign In Proposition 65 Abuse,” the firm established that “… Governor Brown had called for sweeping changes to the Proposition 65 regime to reduce the potential for ‘frivolous shake-down lawsuits’ under the statute.”

However, the report added, “facing pressure from the plaintiffs’ bar, the Governor’s office recently released a much more modest proposal to amend Proposition 65. The proposal would expand slightly the statute’s exemption for small businesses; permit the relevant state agency greater flexibility in determining safe-exposure levels; and subject payments made in lieu of civil penalties to greater scrutiny.” But then the firm outlined leadership from the civil judiciary, including decisions on real-world testing for lead content in common foods.

Wait. Are we not told that the California courts are anti-business? Well, for an example of California civil decisions being pro-business check out the post here.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California Budget, court abuse, cut backs, Gov. Jerry Brown, insurance industry, pro-business, Proposition 65, tort reform

Gov. Brown Hires For Superior Court Positions

September 3, 2013 By CCM Staff

A few new people will be coming to work for the state’s superior court system soon, but as regular readers have no doubt realized it’s not support staff. Announced is another round of judicial hires for the state-mandated $178,789-per-year jobs. Notable among this round of appointments is Sunil R. Kulkarni, who the South Asian Bar Association identifies as the first South Asian American judge ever appointed in Northern California, and an actual Republican for the San Diego Superior Court bench (most Brown-selected judges are Democrats).

California actually elects its judges. But typical judicial careers begin with an appointment by the governor to fill an open bench. Those chosen rarely face election challenges. The Republican judge in the San Diego court has served as a deputy public defender at the San Diego County Public Defender’s Office, Office of the Primary Public Defender since 1994 and has been an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law since 2003.

Details and background from the new judges abounds at the California Newswire.

Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California, california court cuts, California Superior Court, Gov. Jerry Brown, Judges, judicial appointments, justice

Next Budget Milestone: Sept. 13

August 27, 2013 By CCM Staff

The next chance at revising California’s budget is Sept. 13, and already the judicial branch is finding that the governor is unlikely to treat it as a special “separate” branch of government. The Courthouse News Service has a telling story about last week’s exchange between the state’s Judicial Council, which sets policy for the courts, and the state finance director, Michael Cohen.

The meeting was a briefing on upcoming state spending process. The CNS reports that “… some judges were more specific in their concerns, such as the governor’s plan to sweep the trial courts’ reserve funds, used to meet obligations like payroll, into one statewide pot. Under the plan, courts are to keep only one percent of their operating budgets in reserve.” That’s a problem for some systems because each of the state’s 58 court systems is, in effect, an independent entity for many functions like paying bills.

Director Cohen also noted that the days of a governor simply taking the judicial budget and “passing it on” to the legislature are unlikely to return. Read the Courthouse News story here.

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: California, California Budget, california court cuts, California State Budget, court rationing, Gov. Jerry Brown, Legal news

Prisons Offer Lessons For Courts Rationing

August 5, 2013 By CCM Staff

There are lessons for civil justice advocates in the ongoing soap opera over California’s prison overcrowding. One is that the state can and will shift its responsibilities to counties, in this case moving inmates to county jails. Another is that the “miracle” of Gov. Brown’s “balanced budget” hinges on many such moves to effectively de-fund agencies. And yet another is that it may take years and years, but the chickens do come home to roost.

The news is that a U.S. Supreme Court decision pretty much gives the state a late December deadline for meeting the terms of a 2009 ruling by a special three-judge panel. That panel said that the state’s 33 prisons were too overcrowded to provide prisoners adequate medical and mental health care. The governor has already met much of the court’s demand from what he calls a “realignment program,” which simply shifted low-level offenders from state prisons to county jails.

It’s unclear what, exactly, the state will do. But it’s worth noting that they have already shifted many “low-level” non-violent inmates to the counties. That means those left in prisons are those that did not make the cut for county jails. And yet another lesson for the civil courts, where cutbacks have also impacted the ability of the disabled to attain public services, that the state sometimes responds only when ordered to respond.

As usual, Howard Mintz (@hmintz)at the Mercury News newspaper makes a complex situation easy to understand. Read his article here.

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Filed Under: Community, Courts Budget Tagged With: California, California Budget, California Corrections, california court cuts, California Prisons, California State Budget, Gov. Jerry Brown, hunger strike, LA County Court, Legal news, Supreme Court