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Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Ind. Courts - More on: Re the Appellate Clerk's docket, has the other shoe finally dropped?

This ILB entry from April 1st began:

Almost exactly one year ago, on April 2, 2008, the ILB posted a note from a attorney-reader, raising the alert that the attorney's "cases that deal with juvenile delinquency matters and TPR/CHINS matters" has suddenly begun disappearing from the Appellate Courts' online docket, "even the case's very existence."
This entry from Oct. 8, 2008 stated:
Today the Supreme Court has filed two orders that hopefully will put the Clerk's Docket back the way it was.
But in the entry from April 1st of this year, the ILB noted that things were not "back the way they were before the Clerk's office started removing them," and continued:
Hopefully, the Clerk's docket will be restored in full, except for the substitution of initials for party names, within the next few days so that cases are treated consistently. Right now, someone doing a search may not even know that some cases are missing, as there is no docket entry at all, and no explanation of a rationale.
I wrote to Clerk of the Courts Clerk Kevin Smith. Here is an edited version, to see the whole go to the April 1st entry:
ILB - Second, are you planning to restore all the juvenile, etc. dockets that were removed last year?

KS - As for the chronological case summaries (CCSs) in juvenile and adoption appeals that were taken off-line last year to bring our appellate courts' dockets into compliance with the requirements of Administrative Rule 9(G)(1)(b)(i), (vi), and (vii), appellate CCSs are now publicly available in all juvenile and adoption appeals that were pending as of, or filed on or after, January 1, 2009 (the effective date of Admin. R. 9(G)(4)(a)(i)).

Re #2, should I read your answer to "Second, are you planning to restore all the juvenile, etc. dockets that were removed last year? to mean that only those that were pending as of, or filed on or after, January 1, 2009 have been restored, and that any others that were removed will not be restored?

KS - Marcia, I will have to check with the Supreme Court to see if it contemplates that sort of endeavor with regard to its understanding of compliance with Admin. R. 9(G)(4)(a)(i).

Well, the answer is now in, and it appears to be "no." I have received a copy of a Supreme Court Order filed April 30, 2009 which states in part:
We interpret the requiremnts of Administrative Rule 9(G)(4)(a)(i) to apply only to appeals that were pending as of or filed after January 1, 2009, and not to appeals that were final before January 1, 2009

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 5, 2009 01:27 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts