Courts rake in fees for Web access

Los Angeles County’s court system is making millions of dollars charging for online access to records, turning its management of public information into a profit center.

No other major urban county in California charges for online access to court records that can help someone learn whether a doctor was sued for malpractice, a contractor was accused of shoddy work, or a prospective tenant had a habit of skipping out on the rent.

There is no charge for an electronic search of civil lawsuits filed in Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties. An identical search is also free in most counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in Sacramento, San Joaquin, Fresno, and Kern counties.

Tapping into the civil index “ought to be free,” said Michael Roddy, executive officer of the San Diego County Superior Court, the second-largest trial court in California.

Roddy and court officials in other counties said providing Internet access to court records is more efficient because the public doesn’t have to drive to a courthouse, park, stand in line, and ask court clerks for assistance. “I prefer you don’t have to come down to the courthouse,” Roddy said.

And yet, the Los Angeles County Superior Court imposes a $4.75 fee for each name searched on the court’s website, www.lasuperiorcourt.org.

Although the public pays, lawyers and law firms among the 22,000 members of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. can get free access to the civil case information.

Los Angeles County court officials say comparison with other jurisdictions is unfair because the county’s system is the largest in the nation.

Even so, the fee charged by the L.A. County court for online searches of public records is out of line with major courts around the country.

The second-largest state court in the nation -- Chicago’s Cook County -- offers online searches of civil cases without a fee.

And it is possible to do an online search of a master index of cases filed in most federal district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts across the country for eight cents a page. To view and print a document filed in federal court also costs eight cents a page.

By comparison, Los Angeles County charges a minimum of $7.50 to view a document of up to 10 pages online. Additional pages cost seven cents a page. Each new document costs at least $7.50.

“We set what we believe to be a reasonable fee schedule,” said Allan Parachini, spokesman for the Los Angeles Superior Court. “We made a business decision to charge for the service,” he said. “It costs money. We’re recovering money.”

In fact, the court is making money.

Documents obtained by The Times show that the Los Angeles County court collected almost $5.5 million for civil and criminal index searches and for viewing and printing civil court records online during the last fiscal year.

The court also collected $2.8 million from motorists who were charged a $10 fee to pay traffic citations (speeding tickets and moving violations) on the Internet or by touch-tone phone. Most major counties impose a fee to cover the cost of processing credit card payment of traffic tickets. The L.A. County court pays card companies 2% of the ticket amount.

Most Southern California counties charge less, including San Diego, where the service is free. But two others, Riverside and San Bernardino, set fees on a scale which sometimes results in a higher charge than in L.A.

Altogether, the L.A. County court collected $8.3 million in fees during fiscal 2005-06 for electronic services that cost $4.7 million to provide.

Parachini said the fees cover the cost of developing, maintaining and expanding the court’s online services.

Despite repeated requests, Parachini refused to make Presiding Judge William A. MacLaughlin or the court’s executive director, Jack Clarke, available for interviews.

But Frederick Bennett, the court’s chief counsel, said the court has the authority to impose fees.

Bennett explained that the Los Angeles County court system does not receive enough money from the state, cannot levy general taxes, and is prohibited from borrowing to pay for new technology. He said the court needs to upgrade its computer systems and begin electronic scanning of records in courthouses across the county, not just in downtown.

“We see aggressive, rapid expansion of these services,” Parachini added. “We need to recover at least part of the cost of doing that.”

But other counties have chosen to absorb the cost rather than make the public pay for online access to public records.

“Our philosophy is not to charge,” said Alan Slater, executive officer of the Orange County Superior Court. He said government services should be available on the Web for no cost or as little as possible.

But the Los Angeles County Superior Court has a different philosophy.

Parachini said the courts spent $3 million in 2002-03 to prepare its online system. In the first year of operation, the fees collected lagged behind the cost of the services.

That had changed by the end of fiscal 2005-06 in June. Fees collected since the services began in 2003 reached $17.7 million, according to the court’s data. That’s $3 million more than the $14.7 million cost of those services.

Some large Los Angeles law firms use the civil case index several thousand times a month. So to avoid bogging down the county computer system, court officials gave the database to the bar association and agreed that the association could update it regularly during off-peak hours -- all at no charge. The information is then stored on the bar’s computers, where attorneys can tap into it.

Lawyers do not have free access, however, to the court’s criminal case information.

Online users searched the county’s criminal index more than 1 million times in the last fiscal year, generating $4.2 million in fees.

By comparison, only 77,106 searches of the civil case index were done in the same period, generating $366,354 in fees.

Of the state’s 20 most populous counties, just nine provide online searches of their index of criminal cases. Of those, only Los Angeles County imposes a fee.

Lynn Holton, spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the Courts, which oversees funding for courts in all 58 California counties, said that organization has not done a survey to determine whether any other counties impose fees for online searches of civil and criminal case information. But, she said: “We have not heard of any other court that is charging a user fee.”

jeff.rabin@latimes.com

Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.