County Bar May Sue Court Over Delays in Civil Cases

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn., whose members normally try their cases in Superior Court, is considering the extraordinary action of suing the court, along with government agencies that fund it, for failing to make enough courtrooms available, it was learned Friday.

Bar Assn. President Larry R. Feldman confirmed that such a lawsuit is being considered.

“Such a suit would not just be against the Superior Court,” he said. “It would include all of the participants in the allocating of judicial resources to the Superior Court, and it would deal with the constitutional rights of litigants.”

The primary goal of the suit would be to ease delays in civil jury cases, some of which are taking longer than the five-year legal limit to come to trial.

The Los Angeles Superior Court, with about 220 judges, is by far the largest of California’s 58 Superior Courts. However, according to the state Judicial Council, the administrative agency for the court system, it is severely understaffed. More than 120 judges would have to be added just to keep its backlog from growing, the Judicial Council found in a study this year. The county Board of Supervisors asked the Legislature to approve only 60, however, and lawmakers cut that to 14.

Feldman declined to speculate on the likelihood that the association’s 30 trustees will approve a lawsuit against the court and other branches of government. “We may not,” he said.

However, one trustee, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said a measure to endorse the lawsuit has a “serious chance” of approval. He said the major arguments advanced against it in private discussions among trustees have been that it would not be decorous for a voluntary bar association to sue a court, and that such a suit might be unsuccessful as a means of compelling the supervisors and the Legislature to provide more judges.

The lawsuit, which may be voted upon by the trustees as early as next week, would probably assert that the rights of litigants to have their disputes resolved by courts are being violated by unconscionably long waits, trustees said.

Thomas Stolpman, president-elect of the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Assn. and a County Bar trustee, said: “The problem is that the government--the county and the Legislature--haven’t provided enough judges to handle the criminal caseload and, as a result, taxpayers who have civil disputes can’t get to court. . . . By delaying (civil) trials for five years, and now more, we’re effectively removing the courts as a dispute resolution mechanism.”

It was unclear whether the contemplated lawsuit would be filed in state or federal court, where cases come to trial much quicker.

Researching Suit

The Bar Assn. has a lawyer, reportedly an expert in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, who is researching such a suit, it was learned. The lawyer, Richard Chernick of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, has been working on the case for at least three months, according to Frank Zolin, Los Angeles County clerk and executive officer of the Superior Court, who said he has supplied Chernick with documents on the court’s own repeated efforts to get more judges. Chernick’s office said Friday that he would have no comment.

A number of trustees and other legal sources consulted Friday said that as far as they knew, such a suit would be unique.

The suit is being advocated principally by civil lawyers for plaintiffs. However, trustees emphasized that the contemplated suit does not represent a split between civil and criminal attorneys because both groups recognize that more judges are needed to try all kinds of cases.

Constitutional Right

Criminal cases take priority over civil cases because criminal defendants have a well-defined constitutional right to speedy trials.

Discussions about the suit are taking place against a backdrop of recent gains the criminal bar has made in pressuring an understaffed Superior Court to make more of its civil court judges available to hear criminal cases.

These recent changes have grown out of a a longstanding jail overcrowding suit by the American Civil Liberties Union against Los Angeles County.

The ACLU won that suit nearly a decade ago and has worked closely with county agencies to develop administrative means of reducing crowding. Convinced that the county was doing all it reasonably could to hold down the jail population, the ACLU began pressuring the courts instead.

Judicial Experiment

The ACLU threatened to add Superior Court judges as defendants to its lawsuit unless the judges agreed to conduct an experiment to reduce overcrowding by assigning more judges to criminal cases part time.

How effective the test was is in dispute. County officials and the ACLU said it worked well, considering its limited scope. But judges said the speedup did not save enough jail beds to be worth increased delays for civil litigants.

The Bar Assn.’s Feldman, a plaintiff’s attorney, said that one day during the experiment he counted only three civil trials being conducted in downtown Los Angeles Superior Courts, when normally there would have been 21.

“We (civil lawyers) don’t have any more resources to give,” he said.

The Superior Court last month killed most of the experiment.

Court, Agencies Split

The ACLU, however, backed by numerous county agencies, has continued to press for a greater commitment from the court to process criminal cases more swiftly. Such a severe split has developed between the Superior Court and various county agencies that the court has asked the county counsel’s office, which has represented its interests in the ACLU lawsuit, to declare a conflict of interest and disqualify itself, officials said. The county counsel has not made a decision.

Stolpman said the problem of civil litigants being “pushed out of the system” goes back years.

“The ACLU suit has only more or less surfaced the whole iceberg instead of just the tip of it. . . . The criminal backlog spilling over into civil has been a problem for the court for at least the last five years.”

The court is portraying itself as caught between competing pressures.

Zolin, the Superior Court executive officer, said: “It certainly points out that we’re caught in the middle trying to balance our allocation of resources between civil and criminal.”

Not Enough Resources

Noting that a recent U.S. Justice Department study said the court was operating efficiently, Los Angeles County presiding Superior Court Judge Jack E. Geortzen said he simply does not have enough resources to satisfy everyone.

“We want to do everything we can to help (the jail overcrowding) problem,” he said, “but . . . we alone are not going to be the cavalry coming over the hill. . . . It just can’t happen that way.”

Zolin said the court asked for a total of 60 judges last year. But county supervisors reduced the request to 28. When the Judicial Council said the court needed 122 judges just to handle increased filings, Zolin said the supervisors endorsed 60. However, the state Legislature approved only 14.

Zolin said he was “a little confused with some of the reports in the press recently that we don’t want judges and that it’s the ACLU that wants judges.”

Split Shifts Urged

John Hagar, the attorney representing the ACLU in the jail overcrowding litigation, has charged exactly that. “I don’t think they’re asking hard enough (for more judges),” he said of the courts, “because when push comes to shove, what the Superior Court wants is buildings. . . . There isn’t the time and the funds (to build more courthouses). . . . They simply have to start working more than one shift.”

Judges have said they oppose split-shift courts because they have been shown to be inefficient.

Hagar said he had heard rumors that the Bar Assn. was considering a suit and said the ACLU would support the Bar group.

“I think it’s a tragedy that you file a lawsuit in this county and you’ve got to wait five years to go to trial,” he said. “Our position is that we need more judicial officers immediately.”