Judges and Judiciary
Aug. 7, 2002
Courthouse Steps
SAN FRANCISCO - Although new rules went into effect July 1 expanding public access to electronic court records, actual access varies greatly statewide, a Daily Journal survey has found.
Some courts have gone beyond the minimum requirements of the rules to provide an extensive amount of information about civil and criminal cases online.
But others are struggling to provide any Internet access at all.
"One of the big stumbling blocks is that some courts don't have the proper type of case management system," said Judicial Council spokeswoman Lynn Holton, who acknowledged that online access varies widely from county to county.
The state Judicial Council, which oversees the state's courts, adopted the standards in December. They require courts to furnish electronic access about all cases through computer terminals at the courthouse or remotely over the Internet. Courts must provide registers of actions, calendars, indexes and other records in civil cases to the extent feasible.
Courts that lack the resources or the technical capacity to provide access to their electronic records must make them available on paper.
As of November, only 16 of California's 58 county courts provided Internet access to court files, and most provided only basic information such as calendar and docket data.
The council decided that records should be available only on a case-by-case basis, reasoning that complete Internet access to court records would threaten the privacy of litigants and make the courts unwitting purveyors of sensitive information.
The media and First Amendment advocates argued that public access to all non-confidential court records is required by the First Amendment, the California Constitution and mandates of the Legislature.
The council, however, disagreed, saying courts are not required to provide online records of six types of cases: criminal, family law, juvenile, guardianship, mental health and civil harassment. In most counties, the public and the media still must go to the courthouse to see those files.
Nonetheless, some courts have gone well beyond what the council required. For example, Sacramento's superior court provides details of criminal, probate, family law and civil cases, more online information than any of the state's trial courts.
But other courts provide little or no case information via the Internet except for high-profile local cases. Mariposa Superior Court, for instance, offers only docket data about the Cary Stayner murder case.
Some counties have begun charging for electronic access. Contra Costa County charges $100 a year for dial-up access to civil, probate and family law cases. Others, such as Orange and San Diego counties, sell compact discs with case information.
Perhaps the most useful and consumer-friendly court Web sites are those that offer electronic filing of claims and suits. Riverside County Superior Court, for example, allows civil, family, small claims and unlawful detainer cases to be filed online.
Traffic as well as complex litigation matters can be filed online in San Francisco. The local site provides links to the Providian, Microsoft and Kaiser Aluminum complex litigation cases.
The Internet system, San Francisco Superior Court Executive Gordon Park-Li said, "saves people, mainly attorneys, from having to make trips down to the courthouse, and there are fewer phone inquiries about cases."
In Sacramento, court officials decided to provide online data about family, criminal and probate matters, as well as civil cases.
"Basically, we felt that if it's public information at the front counter, it's public information for all purposes," Superior Court Executive Jody Patel said.
Sacramento furnishes indexes, including case name, number, type, date filed and the parties involved, as well as search capabilities. In addition to being able to file small claims matters online, litigants can monitor their cases and get tentative rulings.
Additionally, by the end of this month, Sacramento will replace microfiche viewers at the courthouse with computers for public use, and Internet access will be expanded to include files dating back to the 1930s.
Los Angeles provides civil and small claim case summaries, as well as calendars.
Alameda County is the only court that furnishes some images of the documents themselves, including complaints and pleadings.
Theresa Beltran, Alameda's assistant executive officer, said she has gotten positive feedback about the system. "Judge Judith Ford has heard from the attorneys who appear before her that having this information and the associated images has been a real asset to them," she said. "They no longer have to call the clerk's office or come down."
Case documents are also available in real time, not the following day. "As soon as it's filed in our system, it goes online," Beltran noted.
Additionally, the county recently started providing high-speed wireless Internet access to the civil departments of its Oakland courthouse. The service allows lawyers to conduct online research, transfer large office files, send and receive e-mail with attachments, gain access to trial databases and print documents from their laptops - all while sitting in the courtroom.
Oakland attorney Dianna Lyons described how she used the new system while arguing a motion:
"My opponent cited a case I hadn't read; I quickly found and read the case on the Internet and was ready with a counter argument by the time my opponent sat down," she said. "I even used it to negotiate settlement language by e-mail when the jury was waiting and counsel were poised to start a jury trial."
Lyons also was able to retrieve documents from her office computer system and print them on the courthouse printer.
Ventura County's Web site allows searches of criminal, traffic and civil cases using names, birthdates or driver's license numbers. Calendars provide times, courtroom numbers and attorney names.
Now that responsibility for the state's trial court system has been transferred from the counties to the state, the Administrative Office of the Courts' technical group is setting up a comprehensive software system.
Many counties are working to upgrade their computer systems to not only provide access to case files but also to allow residents to post bail online or schedule traffic school.
"We'd absolutely love to have it," said San Diego's Court Executive, Stephen Thunberg. "Nobody gains by forcing citizens to come to the courthouse to transact certain types of business." He estimated it will cost several million dollars to modify the computer system used in Ventura and Orange counties for their use. "You can't just take a system from one court and plug it into another," Thunberg noted. County names, for instance, are hard-coded into system.
But the council's new access rules impose restrictions on electronic court records that do not exist on paper records, according to a suit filed last October by the San Jose Mercury News. That suit accuses Santa Clara County court officials of illegally restricting public and press access to its civil case management database. San Jose Mercury News v. Superior Court, C01-20999.
The newspaper's suit directly challenges the policy that access is restricted to a case-by-case basis, asserting that reporters need to monitor both individual cases and the performance of the judicial system as a whole.
According to James Chadwick, an attorney with Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich in Palo Alto, which represents the California Newspaper Publishers Association in the matter, "This is public information, subject to a constitutional right of access."
Meetings with Santa Clara County court executives have yielded "some progress" in the suit, said Chadwick. He described the county's computer search capabilities as "fairly rudimentary" and noted there is no way to search registers of action or get access to multiple registers.
Donna Domino
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