Backlog Figure for S.D. Courts Raises Doubts

The San Diego Superior Court cut its backlog of civil cases awaiting trial by 75% last year, recently released statistics indicate.

The astounding cut would seem to dramatically highlight the success of the controversial “fast-track” plan, which pushes judges to speedily resolve civil cases. First put into practice in San Diego, it has been closely watched by the rest of the state.

The cut is all the more amazing because it occurred during a year that saw all civil trials in San Diego come to a screeching halt for three weeks. Not only that, other county courts reported slight increases in the number of cases they had waiting for trial, the statistics indicate.

The problem is that the San Diego court’s judges and managers don’t believe the numbers.

“If somebody told me I reduced the caseload in that year by 20%, I would be ecstatic. And I think we probably did that,” said Judge Michael I. Greer, the court’s presiding judge last year.

“But to have reduced the caseload by 75% in one year is not the real world.”

Greer and San Diego court administrators conceded that they generated the numbers, which they passed on to the state, which dutifully reported them. They also acknowledged that they have a good, but not firm idea about why the figures might be wrong, can only guess at what the true numbers might be and are scrambling to figure out the true picture.

So, at a time when the state report should be a point of pride for the San Diego court and Greer’s leadership, he is left, once again, to deny charges that the three-week moratorium on civil trials was not a pressure ploy designed solely to secure more judges for the county--which it did. “I was not crying wolf,” he said.

And, though the report should provide empirical support for the efficiency of the “fast-track” plan, Greer, one of its primary proponents, is left to fret about whether the statistics will instead spark a public-relations fiasco and jeopardize expansion of the fast-track program around the state.

“It hurts the system to have inappropriate figures like that,” Greer said. “Then people wonder about everything. It’s unfortunate. I’m rather taken aback by it.”

According to the figures, the San Diego Superior Court reported 9,141 civil cases “awaiting trial” on June 30, 1988. At the end of the next fiscal year, on June 30, 1989, the San Diego court counted 2,249 waiting cases, a 75.4% drop.

The statistics were published Jan. 5 by the Judicial Council of California, which administers the state courts. They were taken from monthly reports sent by the courts themselves to the state agency’s San Francisco headquarters, said Mike Kramer, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts.

By contrast, the eight other Superior Courts that were ordered by law to begin a “fast-track” program beginning in January, 1988--a year after the plan began in San Diego--reported that the number of cases awaiting trial went up by a combined 4% from June, 1988, through June, 1989, according to the Jan. 5 report.

Those eight courts include other counties with large backlogs, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Orange and Sacramento.

Superior Courts that voluntarily instituted a “fast-track” program in 1988 recorded a 6% increase, according to the tables. All other Superior Courts reported a 23% increase.

Because the San Diego figure is so dramatically down when other counties’ are up, Ron Titus, the director of research and statistics for the Administrative Office of the Courts, said he “would definitely suspect something is wrong there.”

And yet both Titus and Pearl M. Taylor, executive director of central operations for the San Diego Superior Court, confirmed that the state agency only printed what the San Diego court sent it.

“I’m not saying it’s not true,” Taylor said. “It’s a gut feeling it’s not true.”

A court deputy, she said, has been assigned to figure out what might be wrong--and, if there’s a discrepancy, to calculate the correct figures. The “strong feeling” among the court’s managers is that there may be a discrepancy caused by a change in computer software, she said.

Court managers suspect the problem is not with the June, 1988, figure indicating 9,141 cases awaiting trial, but with the June, 1989, count of 2,249--which should be “more like 7,000,” said Kenneth Martone, executive officer of the San Diego court.

Court staffers hope to have a clearer picture by the end of the week, Martone said Monday.

All of this might never even have been noticed in previous years because the tables detailing the number of pending cases were printed in the spring as an appendix to the Judicial Council’s annual report. Buried among reams of statistics in the back of a fat, bound book, the “awaiting trial” category rarely drew public attention.

This year, however, the Judicial Council published on Jan. 5 a slim volume listing the “awaiting trial” tables--along with information on filings, dispositions and criminal convictions--for all state trial and appellate courts.

“The worst thing that can happen is to have statistics like that come out and have someone say, ‘How did you do it?’ ” Taylor said. “We have to say, ‘We didn’t do it.’ ”

That answer is especially galling, she said, because the success of the “fast-track” program is being measured, in large part, by what happens in San Diego. The program began in San Diego in 1987, a year before it was taken up anywhere else in California.

The program pushes San Diego judges to conclude 90% of civil cases filed after January, 1987, within 12 months. The court’s most recent statistics indicate that it is meeting the 90% goal at the 24-month mark, Greer said, much better than the four years it used to take to get a case to trial but not what the program demands.

The fast-track programs are to be reviewed at the end of 1990 by the state Legislature, which, after watching San Diego’s experience with it in 1987, ordered it extended in 1988 to the eight other counties with large backlogs and urged other counties to experiment with it.

“I would bet we had a very significant reduction in our backlog,” Greer said. “But, to me, significant would be, just guessing, 20%.”

The publication of the 75% figure, meanwhile, has renewed debate over Greer’s move in February, 1989, to halt civil trials because of an overwhelming backlog of criminal cases. Civil cases resumed three weeks later, after Gov. George Deukmejian named seven San Diegans to the Superior Court bench.

“I had to get out those criminal cases,” Greer said. “I was down five judges and in trouble in crime. The minute I got those judges assigned, I could go back to work. I think those cases are too important to play games with them.”

The number of criminal cases awaiting trial rose from 691 in June, 1988, to 848 in June, 1989, a 23% increase, according to the Judicial Council tables.