Quick use of technology, hard work helped counties through the pandemic

Presiding Judge Kirk Nakamura led the Orange County Superior Court to complete more than 100 trials while many other courts shut down in the beginning months of the pandemic.

Not all county courts have been impacted equally by the near-halt in proceedings for civil and even criminal matters. Los Angeles and San Diego counties continue to face particularly daunting case backlogs amid the pandemic while other courts seem to have fared relatively well.

Courts that have maintained relatively low case backlogs point to their quick adoption of remote hearing technology, summoning temporary judges to handle matters and a higher rate of response to juror summons.

Sacramento, Riverside, San Francisco and Orange counties are among the courts that were able to erase much of their case backlogs and continue holding proceedings.

"With the assistance of the bar, which we are eternally grateful for, we are able to conduct a large number of settlement conferences and get those resolved," Orange County Presiding Judge Kirk Nakamura said. "In the meantime, in the criminal arena, we had a situation where we were able to resolve many of the criminal matters by settlement. We had reassigned many of our judges to the criminal law arena, in anticipation of having a huge influx of criminal jury trials and we had to deal with it because of the backlog. Fortunately, that did not materialize and we were able to deal with all the criminal matters that came up."

As of late November, temporary judges in Orange County had conducted almost 600 settlement conferences -- 280 in civil proceedings, 230 in family law matters and 80 probate. Other than being able to settle a good portion of cases, Nakamura and his court enjoyed a 60% response rate to jury summons, and a quick installation of technology allowing for remote appearances.

In half of the 58 counties in California, the presiding judge when the pandemic hit had already served for a year in that position. For the other half, the presiding judges in charge of court operations had mostly been assistant presiding judges only months before.

Presiding Judge Russell Hom of Sacramento County Superior Court was thrust into the position only a couple of months before he was forced to shut down the court in March. He had planned to retire when he was asked to fill in as the leader of a court that, because of internal disagreement, could not decide on who should take over.

"I had no intention of becoming the presiding judge," Hom said in a recent phone interview. "I was the person who was slated to retire and sort of jumped into this within two months of the pandemic."

Overcoming the problems and working together, Hom said he and his court were able to mostly resolve their case backlog.

In Riverside County, Presiding Judge John Vineyard and Assistant Presiding Judge John Monterosso took what was a novel approach at the time. Rather than trying to sort through the backlog in civil cases created by the court closing in March, they decided to wipe judges' calendars and asked lawyers to refile their motions. This and their ability to embrace technology early on in the pandemic, was a major help in addressing the backlog, Vineyard said.

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Judge John Vineyard

"I believe we have 95 rooms in the county; 90 of them were already configured with WebEx," Vineyard said. "So when we started doing remote hearings in civil and family and probate, in all the areas that were allowed to do telephone hearings, we already had the technology. When it came time to livestream, to meet the public access requirements, constitutional requirements, we were able to do that through WebEx with the equipment that we already have. So we were ahead of the curve and didn't have a huge hiccup there... And then we transitioned that into Microsoft Teams."

Los Angeles County Superior Court, the largest local court system in the nation, still faces a 7,000 civil case backlog, according to the latest estimate.

In a recent virtual panel discussion hosted by Mike Arias of Arias Sanguinetti Wang & Torrijos LLP and the Consumer Attorneys of California, LA Presiding Judge Kevin C. Brazile was reluctant to promise his court would start hearing civil jury trials in January.

"One of the questions that's come up from a lot of people is, 'Are they really going to start in January?'" he said. "The answer is yes and no."

"It's up to the individual trial judges' case management," Brazile said. "Right now our civil inventory for personal injury cases is 42,000. That's up from what we had pre-pandemic, which was about 36,000. Our independent calendar, all-purpose civil court cases, that inventory is also 42,000. That doesn't count our collections cases. We've got about 10,000 unlawful detainer cases that we have to handle, and we've got about 7,000 complex cases."

The county has 511 judges, 73 commissioners and nearly 600 active courtrooms in 39 courthouses in 12 districts.

Despite being able to close a $61 million budget deficit in the 2020-2021 fiscal year, and avoid furloughs and layoffs, Los Angeles Superior Court now faces a deficit of up to $35 million for the 2021-2022 fiscal year, Brazile said.

San Diego County Superior Court faces a similarly daunting task in addressing its backlog. Presiding Judge Lorna A. Alksne said, as of early December, the backlog in cases was growing.

While initially optimistic she would open civil jury trials in January, Alksne, like Brazile, seemed less optimistic in light of the reported surge in coronavirus cases and increased restrictions, during a recent interview.

"I had kind of positive happy feelings ... that we were going to start doing jury trials in January for civil," Alksne said. "And now with the purple tier and the massive COVID outbreak that's happening in the state of California and all over the U.S., I don't have such positive feelings about whether or not January is the right time for us to start preference trials."

There are 135 judges, and 17 commissioners serving in the San Diego County Superior Court. However only 112 departments have been operating during the pandemic, Alksne said.

"Not only do we have a backlog in criminal and civil and in other case types, we are adding to it," Alksne said. "I think that's unique to the large courts. I'm not sure. I'm not in the smaller courts but in the large courts like San Diego and Los Angeles the backlog is just astronomical."

She attributed the backlog to delays caused by restrictions on courtroom capacity, remote appearances and a low jury summons responses. San Diego County has had one of the lowest jury response rates, hovering around 5% during the pandemic, Alksne said.

Monterosso, who will step into the presiding judge role in Riverside County in January, voiced an opinion largely shared among court leadership in the state.

"Nobody expected this, nobody planned for this, obviously. ... I think you look at every court in the state, prior to February or March, things were pretty good when it came to budgets when it came to where we were as a branch, and then all of that unraveled," he said. "And so all those plans get thrown out the window. And now it's essentially survival. Maybe that's overstating it, but it's a matter of just trying to get back to some level of normalcy in your judicial system."

Despite its success in handling its backlog, the Orange County court faces a 10% cut to its budget next year, Assistant Presiding Judge Erick L. Larsh said. It usually operates at a $240 million budget with $170 million of it going to staff. Unfortunately, the budget deficit, which was already at 15% before the pandemic hit, has led to the court having to implement furlough days, Larsh said.

"We cut all the pencils and papers that we can, but at some point, you get the personnel and that's very, very difficult," he said. "Our staff here are some of the hardest working people I've seen. They go above and beyond and for us to go to them and say we need to furlough them or we need to close the court 12 days a year, or something such as that, that you see throughout the state, is just devastating."