SM court business expected to continue uninterrupted
A Santa Monica courtroom will be closed permanently in less than two weeks as part of an effort to offset a more than $58 million court system budget deficit.
Los Angeles County Superior Court officials announced Friday that effective Nov. 1, they were closing more than 28 courtrooms county-wide, including the one in Santa Monica.
“We’ve tried to minimize the impact as much as possible,” said Assistant Presiding Judge Robert A. Dukes. “We’re happy this is all we have had to do.”
At the Santa Monica Courthouse, officials say the courtroom to be closed currently handles small claims appeals and general civil matters. Clerks at the courthouse said Friday they were told small claims may be combined with traffic court so that one docket is heard in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
West Division Presiding Judge Alan B. Haber acknowledged there would be changes in Santa Monica’s courts, but said overall operations would continue uninterrupted.
“We’re going to be OK,” he said. “We’re making the adjustments and we are going to get by.”
“We’re going to be OK. We’re making the adjustments, and we are going to get by.” — — ALAN B. HABER West District Presiding Judge
Court officials said they tried to be as fair as possible in choosing the courtrooms to be closed. A specially chosen panel was commissioned in September to analyze where cuts could be made.
“Each department’s caseload was taken into account,” said Kyle Christophersen, a Los Angeles County Superior Court spokesman. “The special committee looked at provisions judges made so that one district wasn’t being hit harder than another.”
Officials said the courtroom closings are only one phase of a multi-pronged approach to cutting costs. Other phases will include layoffs and closing prisoner lock-up facilities in Hollywood, Monrovia and South Gate.
“The plan is always to not hinder service,” Christophersen said. “Some services may be affected and some courthouses may not offer some services, but those specifics have not yet been made.”
Christophersen said administrators rejected the idea of raising court fees or finding other means of generating more revenue instead of making cuts.
“The intent was to not hinder access or raise fees,” he said. “We are trying to handle this internally.”
More lawsuits are filed at the Santa Monica Courthouse than any other facility its size in the entire Los Angeles Superior Court system. And in the past year and a half, civil case filings in Santa Monica have increased 18-20 percent.
The dramatic increase in litigation has taxed Santa Monica’s court system and forced judges to juggle up to 500 cases at a time.
Some worry that with the poor economy, there will be an increased demand for court services, which won’t be available because of the budget cuts.
“As more businesses get into financial trouble and as more people are engulfed in the economic malaise we currently have, quite naturally there are more disputes and financial problems, and then we’ll have more people who turn to the courts,” said Richard Bloom, a Santa Monica City Councilman and a lawyer who volunteers as a Santa Monica Small Claims Judge Pro Tem.
“We’ve already seen a noticeable increase in the cases coming into small claims court,” he said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 19, 2002. Read the original PDF.