Justice Trotter Urges Expansion of Santa Ana Court

The crush of appellate court work, especially in civil cases, warrants two more seats on the state Court of Appeal division in Santa Ana, the presiding judge said Thursday in his first “state of the court” report.

Justice John K. Trotter Jr. said the four-justice division, which began operations two years ago, produces about a dozen more written opinions per justice than the state average, but its backlog is likely to grow by 200 cases this year.

“I’m not sure that adding judges is the answer, but I don’t know what else we can do in the short range,” Trotter said in an interview. “Litigants and lawyers and taxpayers are going to pay the price if we don’t do something in the long run.” Any addition of justices would have to be made by the Legislature.

Unique to the division, which handles primarily appeals from Orange County Superior Court, is the fact that 70% of its workload involves civil cases. No other division in California’s six Court of Appeal districts has more civil cases than criminal cases, Trotter said.

Mostly Civil Cases

In addition, the division gets more appeals from court rulings--called writs of mandate-- than any other division, and more than two of the districts. Civil cases account for 75% of the writs.

“The fact remains, we deal primarily with civil matters, which tend to be more complex and difficult than their criminal counterparts” and take more time to decide, Trotter said in the report, which he plans to make annually.

“At the trial level, justice delayed may be justice denied; but at the appellate level, lack of in-depth consideration of the issues presented is an absence of justice,” Trotter said in the report.

In the first four months of 1984, the division received about 40 appeals a month from the Superior Court. But then, justices discovered that the county clerk recorder, Lee Branch, had been holding appellate files that were long overdue.

On several occasions, the court threatened Branch with contempt to get him to forward the files from the lower court, and the court started getting as many as 80 cases a month in the last half of the year, Trotter said.

In an interview, Trotter theorized that civil cases may be numerous because affluent Orange County residents can afford to take the extra legal step and because lawyers may be testing new Superior Court, as well as new appellate court, judges.

Trotter was appointed to the 4th Court of Appeal District, which covers Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Imperial and Inyo counties, in early 1982, when divisions operated only in San Diego and San Bernardino.

1982 Appointees The other three justices--Edward J. Wallin, Thomas F. Crosby Jr. and Sheila Sonenshine-- were appointed in November, 1982, just before the new Santa Ana division began operations in January, 1983.

The division was created a year earlier, but a court suit delayed its start.

Meantime, Trotter said, appeals were being filed and the other divisions were sending Orange County cases to the new but not yet operating body.

“Thus, by our second month of existence, we had a backlog of 353 cases,” he said. Another 468 appeals and 486 writs were filed that year.

In 1984, the appellate division handed down 430 written opinions and issued final orders without opinions in 480 other cases. Only 10 of the 910 decisions were appealed to the state Supreme Court. The state average number of written opinions from each justice is 95 a year. The Santa Ana division’s average load per judge was 107.

‘At the appellate level, lack of in-depth consideration . . . is an absence of justice.’ It now takes about 16 months after a lower-court record is filed before an appeal can even be placed on a calender for oral arguments. Once the case is submitted after arguments, the court has 90 days to rule--unless it reopens the case and resubmits it, to gain an extra 90 days.

Trotter chairs a statewide committee of judges and court personnel to choose and implement an automated system for the appellate court. The four justices and four attorneys on the 12-lawyer central research staff have computerized word-processing systems now.

To speed up appeals further, the Santa Ana division is experimenting with a plan to transfer records from the lower court more quickly and with appellate settlement conferences.