L.A. Failure to Merge Courts Proves Costly.

Nearly 18 months after California voters approved a measure allowing counties to merge their Superior and Municipal Court systems, Los Angeles is one of only two counties that has not yet done so.

As a result, the county courts are losing out on several million dollars in state funding for modernization and for speeding complex business cases.

"This is really important for L.A. businesses because the current system is causing roadblocks and delays in the courts," said Jerry Jeffe, legislative affairs deputy for the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce. "Right now, businesses are having to resort increasingly to costly private rent-a-judges because justice is not being administered effectively in our public courts."

In June 1998, California voters passed a constitutional amendment allowing counties to merge their state Superior and Municipal Court systems as a way to save on overhead and speed cases through. The idea, according to the state Judicial Council, the measure's chief backers, was to give court systems increased flexibility to shift judges and cases around to minimize backlogs.

Also, by combining two court administrations, duplicative positions could be eliminated and those people could be shifted to other staff-starved areas. The Municipal Court would basically disappear, and all judges in that system would become Superior Court judges.

The law doesn't require counties to merge their court systems; it was left up to the judges in each county to vote on the issue. However, as an incentive for county court systems to unify, the state Legislature allocated $12 million in additional trial court funds for this year and is set to disburse another $12 million next January, contingent on unification.

L.A.'s share of that would have been $3 million for this year and a little more than $3 million next year.

So why haven't L.A.'s courts merged?

In short, because L.A.'s Superior Court judges are against the idea. This year, two votes of county judges were taken, and each time, Municipal Court judges supported unification and Superior Court judges overwhelmingly rejected it.

In the last vote in June, 167 Municipal Court judges (90 percent of the total) voted yes. Only 66 Superior Court judges (28 percent of the total) voted yes, while 167 voted no.

Another vote is tentatively set for December, though there is little indication that the numbers, will shift substantially. That would leave L.A. and Kern counties as the only ones that haven't merged their courts and are thus ineligible to receive the millions of dollars in court modernization funds.

John Clark, executive officer and clerk of the L.A. Superior Court, said the Superior Court judges are concerned about creating a "monster-sized court system" that would be under severe strain.

"Right now, this Superior Court is the largest such jurisdiction in the entire country, let alone the state," Clark said. "A move to merge with the Municipal Court would increase the caseload eight-fold, since there are so many more Municipal Court cases to begin with. So there is real concern that a combined court system would be too large and unable to provide the quality of service and access to justice that the people would demand."

Indeed, according to one state judicial official, that is a legitimate concern for the L.A. courts.

"There is a chance that it could become too unwieldy," said Dennis Jones, chief deputy director of the Administrative Office of the State Courts.

But, he added, studies of other court systems around the country show that the benefits of unification outweigh the costs. "We have seen increased availability of judges for additional uses, like family courts, business courts, teen courts and drug courts," Jones said. "All of these take the pressure off the main system."

Privately, several attorneys and observers suggested another reason why Superior Court judges are dead set against merging: the fear that they would have to dabble with trivial cases like traffic tickets and drunk driving arrests.

"It's a prestige thing as much as anything else," one observer said.

Another official connected with the courts said few judges want to deal with traffic cases, even Municipal Court judges who have to handle them on a daily basis.

Whatever the reasons, the Superior Court judges have held up the disbursement of extra state funds that would have been used to increase automation in the courts and to allocate more resources to so-called "complex cases" that involve several parties. Many of those cases are business-related.

While the county's courts have worked down the backlog for civil cases from an average of four to five years in 1995 to 18 to 24 months today, there remains considerable frustration in the business community and among area law firms at the pace of justice.

"Right now, we are seeing that judges are having to share research attorneys," said Andre Cronthall, a partner in the litigation department at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. "This may not be much of a factor in simple cases, but in very complicated business cases, it can slow things up tremendously. That's why we don't feel good about forfeiting those funds."

L.A. County Behind in Key Jury Reform, Too

HOWARD FINE 

You're summoned to jury duty and for 10 days you sit around and wait to get called to a courtroom as part of a prospective panel.

Even then, there's no guarantee that you'll actually make it onto a jury. Meanwhile, your boss is mad because he or she has to make special arrangements while you're doing your civic duty.

It's no wonder that a 1998 survey by the administrative arm of the state court system concluded that only 4 percent of the summonses sent out in L.A. County actually result in someone showing up ready to serve. (The statewide average was only 12 percent.)

Looking to boost those numbers, the state Legislature last year passed the jury reform law. Under the bill, anyone receiving a jury summons only has to report for one day. If the person is not called into a trial - or is called and then dismissed - then he or she is excused altogether.

"More people would be willing to go down to the courthouse for a single day," said Mark Wood, head of litigation for O'Melveny & Myers, L.A.'s largest law firm. "As it is right now, my friends and neighbors who get called sit around for days, which is not productive for them or for the courts."

The law gave counties until Jan. 1, 2000 to implement the system, unless an extension is granted. As of last week, 50 of the state's 56 county court systems had fully complied.

L.A. County is one of the major laggards. In fact, L.A. County is so far behind that only three of its 33 court sites have implemented the one-day/one-trial system. And according to John Clark, executive officer and clerk of the L.A. Superior Court, it's possible that less than one-third of the court sites will be converted by the end of next year.

"We would like to see much faster implementation of jury reform here in Los Angeles," said Jerry Jeffe, legislative deputy for the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce. "The current system hurts companies that lose valuable employees, and it skews the jury pool for trials involving businesses because so few people with full-time jobs actually serve."

The problem, Clark said, is lack of funding. To implement the one-day/one-trial method, a county needs a larger pool of jurors. That means sending more summonses, providing larger waiting rooms and finding more parking, among other things. Those are big obstacles in a county that has the largest court system in the state, with more than 5,000 jurors reporting to courthouses every day.

"We've made the commitment to move to one-day/one-trial," Clark said. "But the program is seriously under-funded. The governor approved $1.2 million statewide to put up one-day/one-trial, of which we received about one-fourth. But so far it has cost us $1.4 million out of our operational budget just to prepare the three sites we've done. To put up the Pomona site alone cost more than (the change) has cost Sacramento County."

Clark said the county needs at least another $7 million to implement the system in all 33 court sites by the end of next year. Otherwise, he said, it could take up to another four years.

L.A.'s request for more funding, along with a request for an extension of the implementation deadline, is on the agenda at the December meeting of the state Judicial Council, which considers administrative issues for the state courts. At the meeting, the council could decide to ask the state Trial Court Budget Commission to disburse emergency funds for L.A. County.

In the meantime, as the Jan. 1 deadline passes, most local jurors will still have to serve for 10 days, despite the fact that almost everywhere else in the state, jurors are excused after one day or one trial.