This and That in Court Tech – July 2018

Animal rescue at Rancho Del Sueno

We share news from California, a private court records access company, a huge report of technology projects from the Ohio state courts, and a commentary regarding a court in Michigan losing 3.6 million paper documents.

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Closing the Barn Door

There is a saying in the USA to remember to close the barn door before, not after the horse has bolted for freedom (this works with dogs and cats too).

"An article reports that a “federal judge on Saturday ordered the Los Angeles Times to remove information from an article that described a plea agreement between prosecutors and a Glendale police detective accused of working with the Mexican Mafia, a move the newspaper decried as highly unusual and unconstitutional.” 

“The agreement was supposed to have been filed under seal, but it was mistakenly made available on PACER, a public online database for federal court documents. 

In response to the order from U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, The Times revised the article to eliminate information about the sealed document. The Times filed an emergency motion Sunday night to stay the judge’s order." 

“We believe that once material is in the public record, it is proper and appropriate to publish it if it is newsworthy,” said Norman Pearlstine, executive editor of the Los Angeles Times.”

This is a significant problem with electronic information.  One it is posted or copied by someone it is essentially impossible to retrieve.  This is where the courts need to consider signing documents with blockchain so that can only be opened for reading if the system is online and connected for authentication to the repository.  I don’t know of any courts who are considering this as part of their future use of Block Chain, but it is something that I believe should be studied?

Perhaps this news from CaseLines is applicable?

A Private Sector Service for Accessing Court Documents

I stumbled across an interesting company that is intermediating access to the court records and providing what is claimed to be a faster and easier interface.  The system is called “DocketBird”. On the website they briefly describe the history of the system:

“DocketBird was founded by a patent litigator and software developer who graduated from Yale Law School and clerked for the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. While clerking, he grew frustrated by how much time he and his colleagues were wasting using Pacer. 

A beta version of DocketBird was released in 2014 after more than a year of development. During the next year, the system was extensively tested by litigators at some of the nation's largest and busiest law firms. DocketBird was publicly released in 2015.”

This brings up the concept that several companies have discussed with me in the past, why don’t CMS/EDMS have data access API’s?  The API can control what is allowed to be viewed/copied?  It seems like the court could have better control?  Just wondering?

Ohio Court Technology Reports 

In a massive article in Court News Ohio by Kathleen Maloney posted on July 23, 2018, that we recommend reading in full, we learned:

Hamilton County Domestic Relations Court has a signature pad check-in, it generates an email to the designated magistrate when all parties have arrived. Then the system sends a text message is sent to tell each of the parties which hearing room to enter. But persons without a cell phone can choose to be personally notified by court staff.

Next, the Ohio Supreme Court secured a $40,000 grant from the JAMS Foundation and the Association for Conflict Resolution to develop the Green County Truancy Reduction Program mobile phone app.

 “The goal of the app is to provide attendance initiatives to incentivize kids to attend, or get back to, school,” said Marion County Family Court Judge Robert Fragale, who serves on the Court’s Commission on Dispute Resolution, which supports the app project."

The Franklin County Municipal Court Tax Case Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) was also described. 

"Alex Sanchez of the Franklin County Municipal Court heard at a conference about an out-of-state court using online approaches to handle traffic cases, and he saw the possible plusses for his court. The court decided to focus first on one type of civil matter – income tax cases from the city of Columbus – and launched a one-year pilot project."

Impact?

“During the one-year pilot, 75 percent of the tax cases resolved online were either dismissed (58 percent) or resulted in an agreement for a long-term payment plan (17 percent). Sanchez, noting that the response has been overwhelmingly positive, found that nearly 30 percent of participants accessed the system outside of traditional court business hours, and 17 percent of users lived outside of Franklin County or out of state.”

A YouTube video of the system is available at https://youtu.be/bgMhEpW4MiQ

Last, a “Medication-Assisted Treatment by Video” pilot is being tested.

“The Ohio Supreme Court is exploring modern ways to offer medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to those individuals diverted by the courts for drug treatment. MAT is the dual use of medication and counseling to treat substance problems. Research shows that combining these treatments often works better than either one alone. 

A pilot project proposes a video option to connect those diverted by courts for drug treatment to medical-care providers. 

The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services received a grant to partner with a national telemedicine company to provide MAT in the state. The initiative would allow patients to receive treatment through a video service that operates like Facetime. The Supreme Court has joined the effort and is setting up a pilot project to test its effectiveness when administered through the courts.”

Whew!  A lot is going on in the Buckeye state.

3.6 Million Court Records Damaged by Flood

We learned via ImageSoft’s Paperless Process Blog, and an article on the MiningGazette.com newspaper's website, that the Houghton County, Michigan courthouse “fell victim to a flood that drenched its more than 3.6 million paper documents.  The water infiltrated the storage vault in the courthouse’s basement (ed note: naturally).  And that a “preliminary estimate gauged the recovery project at $443,714…and includes vacuum freezing the records, water/sewage cleaning and drying the microfilm.  From there a machine will separate any pages that are stuck together.”

So many comments to make. 

First, why is a small rural Michigan County keeping 3.6 million court records?  Apparently, they had no retention policy?  If they had one, they could have just scanned the important documents like the original plea/charge filing and results.  Any pending cases open longer than 10 years should have been closed by the court and the records destroyed.

Next, scanning.  The world has changed.  In many instances, one would be better off bulk scanning the basement full of records and then allowing OCR’ing for search/retrieval using the same “e-discovery” technology that is used in large civil cases.  This approach also means one may not have to do a lot of data entry on everything as a traditional CMS/EDMS requires.  Particularly if these are essentially archive records.

Third, it is a good thing that E-filing is being implemented in Michigan.  The could will get many of their new documents in electronic format where it can be referenced in the CMS and EDMS.

Fourth, I would suggest that the court throw away (or not purchase) the shelving and file cabinets that were in the basement.  That way one isn’t tempted to fall back on the old ways.

And last, kudos to Houghton County Clerk Jennifer Lorenz for planning “to suggest digitally backing up the county’s records. ‘To me, that’ll be almost at no cost, so would we not start going ahead, for the future?’"