Thursday, Sept. 12, 2002 | 11:14 a.m.
A lack of courtrooms and an abundance of medical malpractice cases and construction defect lawsuits have Clark County District Court judges sniping at each other and court administrators struggling to appease all of them.
The tension became obvious during a monthly judges meeting Wednesday, with District Judge Michael Cherry hinting that some of his fellow judges don't work as hard as others and Judge Joseph Bonaventure accusing Cherry of putting his needs ahead of the community's.
The exchange followed a recent falling out between Cherry and Bonaventure that occurred over the summer, after Cherry questioned the system of assigning cases to judges. He noted that Bonaventure ended up with most of the cases that received media attention.
The two had been close before that. Bonaventure had asked Cherry to act as his spokesman during some of those high-profile cases.
"It's a sad thing that we have to argue over what we've been elected to do," Cherry said. "The only thing we don't do is Family Court and that's because of the statutes. When we were elected the people trusted us to do everything."
The disagreement Wednesday centered on the division of labor, both for current judges and for two new judges to be elected in November, as well as where the new judges will work in the crowded Clark County Courthouse when they begin Jan. 1.
When legislators agreed to increase the number of Clark County District civil and criminal judges from 19 to 21, the assumption was that the Regional Justice Center would be finished and there would be ample courtrooms.
AF Construction, however, is already a year behind schedule and court officials have no idea when the RJC will be open.
The dispute over judges' duties came as the jurists considered what types of cases the new judges should be assigned, given the lack of courtrooms and the needs of the community.
Civil cases far outnumber criminal ones -- 17,000 lawsuits in 2000 compared with 8,300 criminal cases -- and the civil proceedings are far more complex, officials noted.
Given those facts, District Judge Nancy Saitta and Cherry argued that Bonaventure and District Judge Donald Mosley should no longer have the luxury of presiding over only criminal cases.
In addition, they suggested that District Judge John McGroarty should take over drug court for retiring Jack Lehman, in addition to his criminal cases.
Bonaventure, Mosley and McGroarty are the only three of the 19 district judges to handle solely criminal cases. Six others handle strictly civil cases and eight split their time between both. Lehman presides over drug court and Chief Judge Mark Gibbons is primarily an administrator.
"We have to look at the entire system and we have to look at it mathematically without regard for our personal preferences," Saitta said. "We're all district judges."
Bonaventure disagreed, saying specialization is needed to meet the community's needs. Some judges are better at one type of case over another, he said.
Mosley agreed with Bonaventure, saying it escaped him why Cherry believes criminal judges shouldn't have the right to choose their caseloads, while civil judges are afforded the right to handle only civil cases.
"It sounds like Mr. Cherry is concerned with Mr. Cherry," Mosley said.
In an interview following the meeting, Cherry said that comparing civil caseloads with criminal caseloads is like comparing apples to oranges.
Criminal cases are simply far less complex than medical malpractice and construction defect cases and they take far less time, Cherry said.
Jury instructions could take days to settle in complex civil cases and yet they are standardized in most criminal cases, he said.
Court Administrator Chuck Short said it is no secret construction defect and medical malpractice cases are having a heavy impact on the court system.
Ten new construction defect cases are being filed every month, adding to the 150 such cases that have been filed since 1998.
While that number may not seem that high, the cases are extraordinarily involved, not only because of the number of people involved, but because of the number of motions that are filed and the length of time it takes them.
Judge can hear 50 to 100 motions during a single pretrial hearing, and the trials themselves take three to five months, Short said.
"They account for only 1 percent of our filings, and yet they are taking 20 to 30 percent of the judges' times in certain departments over the course of a year," Short said.
The problem was exacerbated last year when the Legislature passed a bill that requires judges to try such cases before all other civil trials, Short said.
To make things worse, legislators recently decided that all medical malpractice cases must go through a mandatory settlement conference.
Those types of cases truly require expertise, Cherry said.
Bonaventure and Mosley say they specialize in criminal law, but every attorney is familiar with the rules of evidence, Cherry said.
"They make it sound like brain surgery, but they just don't want to do civil cases. It's as simple as that," Cherry said.
Bonaventure said judges who specialize gain an expertise in certain areas of the law. If doctors and lawyers can specialize, why shouldn't judges, he asked.
"This going back and forth between civil and criminal every five weeks doesn't work and it never will," Bonaventure said.
The Clark County District Court went to a specialized caseload system in July 1997 hoping to reduce the backlog of cases, and a 1998 study showed it resulted in a 20 percent decrease
Bonaventure noted that now caseloads are stagnating.
"The idea of wanting to fulfill the needs of the judges is ridiculous," Bonaventure said. "We need to fulfill the needs of the community. That's just my humble opinion."
The judges are expected to vote next month on specialization and what to do in Departments 20 and 21.
Meanwhile court administrators released the results of two audits on the assignment of criminal cases that were ordered after Cherry's comments questioning the randomness of the system.
District Court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer said the study revealed no evidence that the random assignment system has been manipulated to give any district judge more high-profile cases than another.
However, the audits did reveal that the Justice Court's case management system allows for the potential misuse or abuse of the system, Sommermeyer said.
Employees with the justice courts, Clark County Detention Center and district attorney's office share passwords and access is not closely monitored in the DA's office, for example.
Sommermeyer said changes are expected to be made within the next 90 days to address the problem.
Bonaventure welcomed the audit's results. "There's not a shred of evidence that the system was manipulated, and I'm not surprised the report came out and said that."
But Cherry, while pleased that problems were found and would be corrected, remained unconvinced. "If anybody believes that manipulation is not being done, I've got a bridge I can sell you," he said.
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