Editorial: Family Court judges should get on track

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 1997 | 9:39 a.m.

WHAT'S more tiresome than reading about another Kennedy family scandal or brouhaha that's in the news?

In Clark County, it's the continuing troubling saga of Family Court.

The latest is the decision of Judge Bob Gaston to resign as the court's presiding judge.

Critics said Gaston made unilateral decisions and exceeded authorization in his attempts to reform the system. One judge noted that Gaston made decisions "without regard for judges having differing views."

Gaston challenges anyone to come up with an example of unilateral decision-making on his part.

There appears to have been a dispute over Gaston's decision to implement mandatory mediation, in accordance with a law passed during the last legislative session. Gaston would have used private mediators because the court's staff and the Family Mediation and Assessment Center cannot handle the caseloads. Other judges balked at this -- despite an obvious need for such mediation.

To top off the dispute, miffed judges boycotted this month's judges' meeting because of the squabble.

It's time for Family Court judges to act like mature adults. How do they expect to make sound decisions regarding the fate of warring families who appear before them if the judges themselves can't get their acts together?

Whether Gaston was making unilateral decisions or exceeding his authority may be open to interpretation. The fact is that at least some attempt was made to reform a Family Court system that is riddled with problems.

As a SUN investigative series pointed out in January, litigants are upset with the length of time it takes for decisions to be rendered, judges' demeanors, lack of thorough investigation of cases, gender-biased decisions and the burdensome costs of litigation. Some of these fall within the judges' purview and can be fixed.

It's clear to us that no legitimate reforms can be enacted until the Family Court judges put aside their egos and personal feelings to work for the good of the system and, most importantly, the people they serve.

The judges must be willing to compromise and come up with better, and perhaps new, methods of handling cases because in many instances the old way of doing business isn't working.

Squabbling among judges doesn't help Family Court litigants. Continually changing presiding judges doesn't help either since many of the new presiding judge's existing cases are divided among his/her colleagues, further delaying decisions and resolutions of cases.

Litigants are not inanimate products on an assembly line. They are men, women and children who need to get on with their lives.

If the Family Court judges are not willing to work together to fairly and more quickly resolve disputes -- no matter which judge proposes what method -- it may be a moot point as to who sits in the presiding judge's chair. Come election time, voters are going to remember the squabbling and the judges' reluctance to move forward and they're going to boot them out of office.

And that would seem a good enough incentive to institute reforms now.