The Chief Justices Hypocrisy Exposed

” The enormous amount of money paid does not match the threat.”

The only real “threat” that exists regarding Queen Feckless is that she, and her entire branch “leadership” consistently render the California Judicial Branch the laughingstock of state government. She, alone, has made it more than easy for the Governor to say “no more money” for the branch, as she prances all over the state, crying poverty, while being chauffeured around the state and to resort spots by her CHP driver, all paid for at public expense. Even an idiot can see that doesn’t exactly reconcile itself with dire financial need.

I’ll ask again: Can anyone name even one act of leadership by Tani Cantil Sakauye -just one – in the past 4 years that is worthy of following?

[crickets chirping]

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Long live the ACJ.

One has to wonder how many Justices make use of this CHP security detail. Who else inside the Crystal Palace gets this perk in the guise of security ? Do Judicial Council members who are also Justices get to be driven around the state in unmarked CHP cars as well? What about Justices that serve on the CJP ? The irony is that Woodhull is right . We in the trial courts deal with stalkers, former defendants, and people who actually make death threats yet no one drives us home or takes us to parties or out of state resorts. Max Rebo is right. This CHP service is a perk from an era that has long passed. In the current environment we are in we can no longer afford providing these types of perks when the public can’t access their courts. The fact that Queen Tani has this perk and uses it when courthouses are closed and court employees laid off tells me she is really out of touch with the reality around her. She needs to resign.

I agree Wendy but add yourself to the hero list. Your contributions here are incredible. Your post about the shredders working overtime at 455 Golden Gate remains one of the best ever.

I don’t know about court reporters but J Ardiaz was the chair of the Trial Court Employees task force that dealt with county court employees becoming court employees during the transition from county to state funding. The union task force memebers loved him. Not!

Thanks OBT. Have a great Memorial Day everyone. I’ve been out to visit all in my family that served this great country and who set the way to protecting all of our freedoms. Without them we couldn’t be seeking positive change here today.

Published today, Friday, May 30, from Courthouse News Service, by Maria Dinzeo:

San Diego Court Signs Up for Odyssey Software
By MARIA DINZEO

(CN) – San Diego Superior Court has joined Tyler Technologies’ burgeoning California court tech empire with Friday’s announcement of a $6.8 million deal for a case management system that will cover criminal, traffic, family and juvenile cases.

The contract breaks down to a one-time license fee of just over $3 million plus $3.7 million for data conversion and training, according to court spokesperson Karen Dalton. The agreement also calls for a yearly maintenance fee of $640,000.

The court has the option to buy additional software to cover civil, small claims and probate cases for $700,000. Those cases are currently handled by software from a now-defunct software program handled by the Administrative Office of the Courts, called the Court Case Management System.

San Diego used the state judiciary’s Master Services Agreement, a pre-negotiated contract for courts looking to buy off-the-shelf software systems. The agreement was developed by a forum of trial court IT staff from Humboldt, Alameda, Mariposa, Riverside, Fresno, Kings, Kern, Merced, Orange, San Diego and San Mateo counties.

The group was formed out of the ashes of the half-billion-dollar CCMS program. The ten-year project to develop one computer system for all 58 trial courts was derided by judges and lawmakers as a fiasco and a boondoggle.
Only a handful of trial courts were using CCMS when it was scrapped in 2012, including San Diego for civil, probate and small claims cases, leaving most of the state’s courts scrambling to find replacements for their increasingly antiquated case management systems.

The forum stepped in and chose three finalists to provide software for the California cours: Tyler Technologies which developed the Odyssey software, LT-Court Tech from Thomson-Reuters, formerly West Publishing, and Justice Systems based in New Mexico as the preferred vendors for California. Tyler has dominated the competition since then with 18 trial courts signing up for the Texas-based company’s software.

The San Diego court is now moving away from CCMS, after becoming one of the first courts to adopt the controversial software in 2006. “The ultimate goal of the San Diego Superior Court is that all case types will eventually fall under Odyssey,” Dalton said.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/05/30/68344.htm

Long live the ACJ.

Another overbuilt courthouse, complete with a three story atrium. At least it’s green. What a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Published today, Tuesday, June 3, 2014, from Courthouse News Service, by Bill Girdner. As always from Girdner, well worth the read.

As I read Girdner’s article below regarding “the attitude” of judicial branch leaders, I thought of the day I sat in a meeting at 455 Golden Gate Avenue and listened to “leadership” of the California Judicial Branch state how the press could take the First Amendment and go f*ck themselves.

As most everyone here knows, that “attitude” isn’t limited to the First Amendment at 455 Golden Gate Avenue.

The First Amendment and Texas
By BILL GIRDNER

Unlike California, Texas has preserved excellent press access to the courts as it went through a technology transformation. But not without a little help.

Courthouse News filed a First Amendment action against the Houston state court clerk in 2010 over delays in press access to the new actions. The clerk, Loren Jackson, thought e-filing was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

On the website for Harris County District Court, the clerk’s name was set out in a much larger font size than the name of the court itself. Jackson’s slogan was “Get on line, not in line.”

It did not save him from getting trounced in the next election, when Texas turned out nearly every local Democrat.

But that was not before U.S. District Court Judge Melinda Harmon gave Jackson some guidance on the First Amendment, ordering him to provide access to any new action filed from midnight until the court closed for business, on the same day the case was filed.

She rejected the arguments trotted out by Jackson then, and now by some clerks in California, that the volume of filings was overwhelming and the court was short on staff.

Judge Harmon characterized Jackson’s attitude during negotiations over press access as “indifferent, irresponsible and even recalcitrant.”

It is revelatory to read the order after the intervening years and see how fresh and relevant it remains, describing to a “T” the attitude we have run into from the clerks in the CCMS courts, such as Ventura and Orange County.

The judge’s words also fit the leaders of the California Judicial Council’s Technology Committee who proposed e-filing rules that built-in access delays and then summarily waved off objections from the press.

As part of her ruling, Harmon tacked on what the French call “la douleureuse,” the thing that hurts, the bill. She awarded CNS a quarter-million dollars in attorney fees.

The clerk of course obeyed the order. He paid the sum and gave the press same-day access. I have a framed copy of the check hanging on the wall.

In the years since the order, the press has seen very close to 100% of the new actions on the day they were filed, whether they were filed in paper form or e-filed, as is now mandatory in the big Texas jurisdictions. Her order also served as a powerful motivator in the rest of the Texas courts.

The key ingredient to top-notch access, as we have found over the course of these battles, is not the volume of filings, or the staff levels, or the technology. It is the will of the court’s leaders. As Judge Harmon put it, “the attitude.”

Courts that had a good attitude on press access to paper records tend to remain good on press access in the transition to electronic records. Courts with a bad attitude have used technology to roll backwards on access, such as Orange County where California’s pernicious e-filing rules were incubated.

Oddly enough, Orange was once, a long, long time ago, an excellent court for press access. Somewhere along the line, the attitude changed.

There is also a good example in the other direction. Sacramento Superior, an old CCMS court, was long a very bad court on transparency. But it is no longer. The attitude recently improved, quite dramatically.

But the two standard bearers for e-filing in California, Orange and San Diego, continue to delay press access to new actions by an average of two to three calendar days — just as the Houston clerk did.

The effect of Harmon’s ruling was to adjust the attitude of not only the clerk in Houston but those in all the Texas courts. As they moved to mandatory e-filing, the big courts in Austin, Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth all preserved same-day press access to the vast majority of new actions.

“While defendants admit that plaintiff has a right of access to newly filed petitions, they maintain that the new method by which the Clerk’s Office is processing case initiating documents is a reasonable time, place, or manner restriction and, as such, survive First Amendment scrutiny,” wrote Harmon.

“The Court disagrees with defendants’ contention and finds that the 24 to 72 hour delay in access is effectively an access denial and is, therefore, unconstitutional,” she concluded in her preliminary injunction order.

In making the injunction permanent, she wrote, “In the context of defendants’ past stubbornness, their verbal assurances that they have complied with the preliminary injunction and the case is moot are not persuasive, nor are their representations enforceable.”

“Without declaratory and permanent injunctive relief, plaintiff would have no protection from future access delays because they might occur not simply from an outright change in policy, but surreptitiously from a mere relaxation of effort by court personnel and the piling up of newly filed petitions,” wrote Harmon.

Her ruling enforced the First Amendment and has had a powerful and lasting effect throughout Texas.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/06/03/68422.htm

Long live the ACJ. And long live the First Amendment.

Wendy, you forgot the ” we could not give them the information they requested because it is not kept in an easily accessable format” to provide such information would be “burdensome to the already harried and short staffed employees of the AOC” due to budget cuts.