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Monday, January 28, 2008

Courts - Montana Supreme Court too slow in issuing opinions; Ohio just right

Supreme Court cases reportedly pile up in Montana. Yesterday the Billings Gazette had three stories on the problem. Some quotes from this lengthy story by Mike Dennison:

HELENA - In Butte, a dispute over building a road to the Our Lady of the Rockies statue has been before the Montana Supreme Court more than two-and-a-half years, with no decision in sight.

In Billings, Peggy Jackson has been waiting more than two years for the high court to rule on the terms of her divorce, which her husband appealed in October 2005.

"I am 65 years old and would like to get my life in order for my kids," she wrote in a letter to the court clerk in December. "Would you please check and see if you can give me any idea when the court will decide my case?"

And in Kalispell, landowner Harry Blazer has been trying for months to sell a piece of property, but he cannot because of a pending court appeal affecting access to the land. The appeal, filed with the Montana Supreme Court by his neighbors, has been before the court since September 2005. * * *

Justices on the court say they're not happy about the long wait and realize it creates problems for those awaiting a decision. But they also say there's not much they can do about it.

"I would stack this court's work ethic against any court that has ever existed" in Montana, said Chief Justice Karla Gray. "I don't think we can do better by any means that any of us haven't thought of - and we have tried."

Gray also said lengthy cases are the exception rather than the rule, noting that the vast majority of decisions are processed in less than a year. About half the decisions also come in under a six-month goal the court sets in its own operating rules.

Nonetheless, attorneys who spoke to the Gazette State Bureau said the wait on some cases is unusually long, and that long waits seem more frequent than they used to be.

Most attorneys declined to speak for the record, saying they don't want their comments to affect cases they have pending before the Supreme Court.

Attorney General Mike McGrath, however, is not shy about giving his opinion on the delays.

McGrath, who is running to succeed Gray as chief justice of the Supreme Court, said the current situation is "unacceptable" and that streamlining the process would be a top priority for him as chief justice.

"There frankly is no excuse for keeping a case up there for more than a year," McGrath said. "It's not fair to the litigants, it's not fair to the public." * * *

Supreme Court justices say reasons for delays are many and that most are beyond their control.

For starters, Montana's Supreme Court has no control over the number of cases it considers, they point out. It must accept and consider any appeal, and Montana is one of only 11 states without an intermediate court of appeals, so appeals from state District Court go directly to the high court.

The court caseload increased dramatically from 1995 to 2004, rising from 580 to a peak of 882. Since then, the load has decreased to 676 cases in 2007, which is only slightly more than the average caseload of the early 1990s.

The Montanna Court has seven justices.

Meanwhile the "Ohio Supreme Court is writing opinions quicker," according to this story from the Cleveland Plain Dealier. Some quotes:

Ohio Supreme Court justices found their stride again in 2007, churning out written opinions on average in five months, a Plain Dealer analysis found.

That was a significant improvement over 2006, when the court slowed to a molasseslike pace, yet Chief Justice Thomas Moyer said he still expects better -- especially from some justices.

The new analysis follows a similar one last year in which The Plain Dealer found that the amount of time it took to turn out majority decisions had increased from an average of five months per case in 2004 to seven months in 2006. One case drew particular attention to the court's 2006 performance: It took nearly a year to release a ruling that freed two Portage County men who had been imprisoned 16 years for a rape and murder they said they did not commit.

Moyer points out that his court is not bound by any time standards for kicking out opinions after a case has been orally argued. But after taking longer each year since 2004 to issue rulings, the high court was earning a reputation for delaying justice.

"That is still a matter in which all of the justices are sensitive," said Moyer, who hopes to further improve the court's efficiency. "We have parties in cases waiting for our decisions. So the time it takes us to announce an opinion is a concern."

In 2007, the justices wrote 131 opinions from cases orally argued and took on average 151 days to return a decision, improving on its 2006 average of 214 days and returning to its 2004 pace of 157. * * *

Just a few state supreme courts around the country have time standards, which range from six weeks to a year. * * *

[Justice Paul Pfeifer] said he thinks last year's Plain Dealer analysis embarrassed the court into rethinking its procedures for releasing opinions.

After that story, the court shortened the period at the end of the process, when opinions are proofread and citations double-checked, from about six weeks to under two weeks.

"All of our numbers will drop" in 2008, Moyer predicted, because of that procedural change.

[Thanks to Howard Bashman's How Appealing for the links.]

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 28, 2008 11:10 AM
Posted to Courts in general