L.A. Superior Courts Nearing Gridlock, Study Concludes

The Los Angeles Superior Court system, staggering under a swelling criminal caseload and a chronic shortage of judges, is nearing gridlock, a RAND Corp. study released Thursday has found.

The crisis in the nation’s largest state trial court is most acute in civil cases, which take an average of more than five years to go to trial. This is not because of increased filings, but because of the priority necessarily given to criminal, mostly drug-related, cases which under state law must be prosecuted within specified time periods.

As a result, many people give up on the system, either not filing lawsuits at all or reluctantly settling their cases out of court.

The report says the county will soon face one of two options: dramatically increase the number of judges, or adopt measures to reduce demand for judicial services.

The study by the Santa Monica think tank recommends adding more than 100 new judges, at a cost of $75 million a year, and hiring at least 66 temporary judicial officers for two years, at a total cost of $94 million, to help clear an existing civil backlog of 44,000 cases. About 335,000 new case filings are expected next year.

The study found that, nationwide, only two other large, urban court districts took longer than Los Angeles to handle civil cases. Los Angeles seldom meets its stated goal of disposing of cases within two years.

Other recommendations include:

* Lengthening the court workday from six to seven hours.

* Diverting civil cases to lower courts, increasing court fees, requiring the loser of a case to pay both sides’ legal fees, adopting “no-fault” auto accident legislation and encouraging private arbitration, mediation and “rent-a-judge” programs.

* Reducing judicial services, such as providing jury trials only in exceptional circumstances.

* Improving court management through the use of computerized systems, policies tailored to different case categories, and longer terms of office for presiding officers for continuity.

The RAND study, authored by James Kakalik, Molly Selvin and Nicholas Pace of its Institute for Civil Justice, was initiated at the the request of court officials.

Judge Richard Byrne, presiding judge of the Superior Court, praised the study for “placing in proper perspective the great disparity between the overwhelming workload imposed on the Superior Court and the limited resources available to do the job.”

He noted, however, that much of the study’s data was gathered before 1985 and does not reflect improvements in the system since then, such as the establishment of civil “fast track” courts and seven “speedy” criminal courts for complex felony trials.