I defer to the many writers on F&HD who know far more than I do about California politics and the impending financial crisis when this state shortly runs out of money. I make my living in the courts, mostly in the Los Angeles Superior Court (“LASC”) system, which once boasted that it had more sitting judges than in all of Great Britain, and I have done so through four down economies in my 32 years as a civil trial lawyer – this being the fifth, and by far, the worst I have ever seen or dared to imagine. My point here is to illustrate what will happen to our civil state court system when California shortly goes broke.
Criminal cases have absolute preference over any civil cases due to the Speedy Trial Act, by which a criminal defendant accused of a crime, if he or she wishes, can force the prosecution to go to trial in a matter of months, ready or not, or the case must be dismissed. For this reason, big city civil litigators often bemoan how hard it sometimes is to get a full civil jury panel when the criminal courts get first pick and may not leave enough left over for a full panel to do voir dire, the jury selection process to pick the 12 who will sit in the box. That is the situation in good times.
Years ago before something you may have heard of called the Fast Track was enacted, first as an experiment, and then later as a permanent part of the Government Code, it took five full years just to get to trial on a civil case in the LASC. Even then, you would often sit around Department 1, a courtroom large enough for the NFL to play a full game, and wait to be called, or, if lucky, get a beeper to wear around for some days waiting for the beep which meant: ‘get your clients, witnesses, and boxes of documents, and get down here within the hour to start your trial.’
The Fast Track in the early 90’s changed everything from a Master Calendar system, like I just described, which was so clogged up that it took a full five years to get to trial, to an Individual Calendaring system where you got one Judge ‘from cradle to grave’ and trials were mandated to happen within one year of filing the case in 90% of the cases and in extreme situations, maybe 18 months or so for the rest. Big improvement appreciated by all, especially clients with major civil matters who could not wait five years for resolution. As famously said years ago, ‘Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied.’
If California goes bust shortly, expect that no civil cases will get out to trial at all because the criminal trials must get out and there won’t be enough money to keep all the courts operating fully all day all the time so they will crowd out any civil cases. This has already happened in Riverside County and we haven’t even gone broke yet.
As is, I have timed it many times and a full trial day in the LASC on a civil trial can actually constitute not more than 3 hours, 45 minutes, after breaks, lunch, and the judge handling what we call the Law & Motion Calendar (Lawyers only hearings generally to argue various motions to the Judge) first in the morning plus Ex Parte’s (urgent short notice matters). That is across a day that may start at 8:30am and go until 4 or 4:30pm and for which a civil lawyer will also be charging for the time commuting to and from the courthouse, perhaps another hour or two each way – meaning that you pay your civil trial lawyer for an eight hour day in court plus a couple of hours of commuting time plus all the night and early morning and weekend work that trials usually entail, so you are paying for 10 or more hours per day, but you only get less than 4 actual hours of trial per day. And, again, that is in good times.
It costs a fortune to run a single courtroom and pay the Judge, the Reporter, the Clerk and the Courtroom Attendant, plus all the Deputy Sheriffs around for security and other staff and all the fixed costs for the benefits, retirement and the physical plant of the giant and badly aging LASC courthouses, of which there are many branches. I have seen various figures so I will not quote one, but, the few hundred dollars that civil trial lawyers have to tender each day for the reporter, the few hundred dollar filing fees, and the meager jury fees are a fraction of the true cost to California to keep each courtroom open and operating in the LASC, let alone the other 66 or so counties.
Courtrooms will have to go “dark,” as we say; lots of them. Judges instead of hearing 20 matters in a morning, will have to hear 40 or 60, and prepare all those stacks of files. This will not enhance the quality of justice. Civil litigants will be forced to hire retired Judges (we used to call them Rent-A-Judges, a term now considered derogatory) at rates of $600, 700 or more per hour to ever get their cases to trial, if they have the do re mi. This will exclude many civil clients from ever getting to trial and will decimate our state court system.
I offer no clever solutions for California’s fiscal crisis and I read closely the many excellent articles on F&HD daily about the wrangling in the state legislature and with the Governor about how in the world we will come up with all the money needed to operate this state and it’s 35 plus million people. But, know this – if and when California goes broke, the civil LASC court system and many smaller ones like it across this state will also go bust and there will be no justice available unless you can afford to buy it by the hour for the adjudication of civil disputes – something which is supposed to be the civilized alternative to interpersonal violence and taking things into one’s own hands. That will truly be a very sad day for California and for our legal system.