Three judges will stay with criminal cases

Kim Smith

Thursday, Oct. 10, 2002 | 9:53 a.m.

District Judges Joseph Bonaventure, Donald Mosley and John McGroarty will stay on the criminal bench and not have to worry about fitting civil cases into their schedules.

During their monthly meeting Wednesday, Clark County's judges voted to keep the current criminal case assignments, but tweak civil case assignments to ease burn-out.

It was a quiet end to a rift between some judges that was revealed during last month's meeting, when District Judge Michael Cherry hinted that judges who carry civil cases work harder than their peers.

Cherry and Judge Nancy Saitta suggested that Bonaventure, Mosley and McGroarty split their caseloads 50-50 between civil and criminal cases.

Bonaventure and the others countered that judges who handle specific types of cases develop an expertise in those cases.

On Wednesday the District Court judges as a whole voted to allow Bonaventure, Mosley and McGroarty to keep criminal caseloads.

The judges also adopted a case assignment system that will determine which judges will handle what percentage of various types of civil cases. For example, Cherry and Saitta will split their caseloads evenly between civil and criminal cases, but one-third of their civil cases will be construction defect cases.