County Bar to Press Lawsuit to Expand Courts

Saying “there is no other way to solve the current crisis,” the Los Angeles County Bar Assn.’s board of trustees voted Wednesday night to sue the Los Angeles Superior Court, the county Board of Supervisors and several state officials for failing to make enough judges and courtrooms available.

The lawsuit, which Bar Assn. President Larry R. Feldman said will be filed in U.S. District Court here today, constitutes the strongest action taken to protest the county’s decade-old shortage of courtrooms.

The suit follows by a month a declaration by U.S. District Judge William P. Gray that he will begin enforcing a 1979 order on jail overcrowding. That order, sought by the American Civil Liberties Union, is expected to force the Los Angeles Superior Court to use more of its courtrooms for criminal matters to cut down on pretrial delays, further slowing the civil trial system.

Officials of the 19,000-member Bar, which represents both civil and criminal lawyers, have focused most of their criticism on the county’s civil courts, where a five-year wait is often encountered by plaintiffs.

Feldman said the lawsuit will ask a federal court to declare that, in both the civil and criminal court systems, “the current allotment of judicial officers for Los Angeles County is constitutionally insufficient,” as evidenced by the long waits.

He said the suit will contend that the court system, the Board of Supervisors and four state officials--Gov. George Deukmejian, Secretary of State March Fong Eu, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles)--have failed to provide enough judges to insure “meaningful access to the courts” as required under federal civil rights laws.

The lawsuit will not ask for a specific increase in judges. However, Feldman said his association would be satisfied if the court required the state to conform to levels recommended by the state Judicial Council, the administrative agency for the court system. The council says that the 220-judge Los Angeles Superior Court needs 122 more judges just to keep its backlog from growing.

The council also said that another 100 judges would be needed to reduce the current civil court backlog to zero by 1992, Feldman said.

The Bar’s lawsuit follows a decade of largely ignored pleas for more judges by the Los Angeles Superior Court, whose officials have warned for years that, without additional judges, civil litigants would be effectively frozen out of courtrooms that would have to be devoted to criminal cases. Such cases take precedence over civil matters because criminal defendants have a clearly spelled out constitutional right to speedy trials.

Court officials have expressed concern for the less clearly defined rights of civil litigants.

“Unless additional judges are provided,” Los Angeles Superior Court executive officer Frank Zolin wrote in 1977, “civil litigants will be denied speedy access to the courts and their constitutional right to due process will be withheld.”

Zolin wrote the comment in a plea for 34 more judges to the county Board of Supervisors, which plays a key role, along with the state Legislature, in providing judges to the court.

That year, like the two years before it, the court got no new judges.

As a result, Zolin noted in a similar plea in 1978, the backlog of civil cases had increased 64% in three years. Civil litigants were waiting an average of three years to go to trial.

‘Hardship . . . Incalculable’

“The hardship imposed upon the thousands of civil litigants denied timely access to the courts is incalculable,” he wrote.

He requested 36 judges and got none. And the backlog of civil cases continued to grow.

“Civil litigants are being denied access to the courts for resolution of their legal disputes,” Zolin wrote in late 1978. “The dire predictions in my previous reports have become a reality.”

In downtown Los Angeles courts, where most time-consuming, high-stakes civil jury trials are held, the backlog was so acute that only 5-year-old cases, or those entitled to high priority because they were filed by people over age 70, were being tried, Zolin said.

In the spring of 1980, the court finally got the 25 additional judges it had first asked for in 1975. But the county Judicial Procedures Commission found the new judges were too few, too late. The backlog was only slightly reduced. It took an average of 54 months for average civil jury cases to get to trial.

The court got another 10 judges in 1981, and reduced its civil backlog substantially. But the court continued to talk in crisis terms.

“The cost and inconvenience to civil litigants caused by delays attributable to the shortage of judges is incalculable,” Zolin wrote in 1982.

He asked for 15 more judges that year and got none.

He got none again in 1983.

With the civil backlog growing again, he asked for 42 judges by the start of 1985.

He got 18.

The court asked for 60 judges in 1986. Fourteen were approved.

Because the state and county share the cost of additional judges, the process of getting judges is “a real maze,” said John W. Sleeter, chief of the financial management division of the Superior Court.

First, he said, the court estimates its needs and they are verified by the Judicial Council. Then legislators introduce a bill to provide the judges. But the Legislature usually will not act on the bill until county supervisors tell it to go ahead.

After legislation passes, the county supervisors decide whether to appropriate funds to fill some or all of the positions authorized by the Legislature. The governor then appoints the number of judges the supervisors have approved.

Feldman declined to disclose the 30-member Bar Assn. board of trustees’ vote on filing the lawsuit, but said there was no dissent.

By filing the lawsuit in federal court, the issue will come to trial much more quickly than if it were filed in a state court--between six and 12 months, Feldman estimated. However, he said, that was not the motivating factor for taking the matter to federal court.

A number of trustees and other legal sources said that as far as they know, such a suit by a group of lawyers is unique.

Since last spring, county court officials have been under pressure from the ACLU to expand the number of judges who handle criminal cases. The ACLU argues that speeding up the criminal court system is the most effective way to alleviate Los Angeles County’s swelling jail population, which has risen from 8,000 to 22,000 in less than a decade.

The ACLU threatened to add Superior Court judges as defendants in its longstanding federal court lawsuit against the county. The suit contends that minimum federal standards for inmates are not being met.

Responding to this threat, Superior Court judges agreed to conduct an experiment to measure their ability to reduce overcrowding. They agreed to devote a large number of civil courtrooms to handle criminal cases parttime. The judges killed most of the program after three months. How much impact it had is disputed.