Nevada judges struggle to keep up with backlog

Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 | 11:38 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- District Court judges in Clark County lost a little ground last year in their battle to keep up with a backlog of cases.

The 33 District Court judges decided 78,064 cases in the 2003 fiscal year, which ended June 30. That was 840 fewer cases than the previous year.

Still they managed to stay ahead of the 77,136 new cases, up 14 percent from the previous year.

"We're busy. We're trying to stay on top of this," Chief District Judge Michael Douglas said. He said the public, the Nevada Supreme Court and the Legislature want the judiciary to be accountable and that's what the judges in Clark County are striving for.

The numbers were part of an annual report on the state's judiciary released today that said that District Court judges statewide disposed of 105,154 cases last fiscal year, an increase of 8,809 from fiscal 2002. The report measured rulings on nontraffic cases.

Even though Clark County courts lost some ground, they outpaced their counterparts in Washoe County per capita by 61 percent, the study showed.

The 78,064 cases, an average of 2,366 per judge, was 61 percent more than the 17,609 in Washoe County, or 1,467 cases on average for each of the 12 judges.

"If they had more filing, they would have disposed of more cases," Douglas said of Washoe County judges.

In Washoe County the 17,609 cases disposed of compared with 8,892 in the previous year or nearly doubled. Ron Longtin, administrator for the court in Washoe County, said the judges disposed of a big backlog.

The report shows Nevada has fewer District Court judges per 100,000 population than seven other Western states. While California has 4.3 judges in what is called Superior Court, per 100,000 population, there are just 2.7 in Nevada.

But the report also shows there are 1,501 cases filed per Superior Court judge in California, compared to the 1,375 for District Court judges in Nevada.

The Nevada Supreme Court, according to the report, decided 1,889 cases last fiscal year, down from the 1,906 in the prior fiscal year. It was the lowest number of ruling in the last four years. It breaks down to an average of 269 decisions per justice.

But the backlog of cases also declined to 1,426, the lowest number in the last four years. The report said Nevada has more cases filed per justice, at 258, than most other appellate courts, based on figures from the National Center for State Courts.

The study noted that Nevada is one of 11 states that does not have an intermediate court of appeals, something the Nevada Supreme Court has been pushing. The 2003 Legislature approved a proposed constitutional amendment to allow creation of an intermediate court of appeals. It would have to be approved by the 2005 Legislature and then placed on the 2006 ballot for ratification by the voters.

Justice Deborah Agosti, who was chief justice when the annual report was finalized, said the courts in Nevada "are productive, proactive and constantly striving to improve the effective delivery of justice to our citizens."

Ron Titus, chief of the administrative office of the court, said computerized case management systems in many courts have improved the ability to track and report caseloads.

Titus reported there were 114,540 new cases filed last fiscal year in the district courts, more than 8,000 from fiscal 2002. Criminal filings actually decreased from 12,191 in 2002 to 12,001 in fiscal 2003. New civil suits increased from 24,143 to 28,077; family court cases rose from 43,885 to 52,258 and juvenile nontraffic cases inched up to 22,2043 from 22,148.

The report said there were 182,671 new nontraffic cases filed in the justice courts in the state. It said 48,228 were disposed of. But the number of decisions did not include the Las Vegas Justice Court, where there were 104,889 new cases but there was no report available on the number of decisions made.

In addition there were 416,505 traffic and parking violations filed with 353,548 cases disposed of in justice courts.

There were 314,159 cases filed in the municipal courts in Nevada, with decisions made in 301,193.