Showing posts with label Financial/Fees. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Financial/Fees. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Some Ideas for Handling the Upcoming Covid-19 Case Surge

 


Everyone can easily foresee the surge of in-person court cases that are coming later in 2021.  Many courts have put case processing on hold.  And assuming that the vaccination program will be successful in the first half of the year, what can courts do to address the case backlog and new matters that will come?  I have some ideas that I will share below.

Please also note that my colleagues and friends of the NCSC have created a tremendous resource around courts and the pandemic at  https://www.ncsc.org/newsroom/public-health-emergency  Click on the Statewide Plans to Resume Court Operations link (you may have to scroll across the red navigation bar to find it).

 

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Dynamic Fees for Courts

 

Mural in the Ariel Rios Federal Building

We can clearly foresee that the upcoming years will be difficult for governments and courts as tax revenue will take some time to recover following the Pandemic.  Court budgets being primarily composed of personnel costs will respond by not filling empty positions, layoffs, and reducing service hours and/or days.

I have an idea that could be considered to ameliorate service reductions that were introduced in recent years, famously by ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft, known as “dynamic” or “surge” pricing.  I explain below.

Friday, July 26, 2019

Punchline – Google Edition – And an Idea



This is a short note today due to travel regarding a CBS News report titled “CBS News investigation finds fraudulent court orders used to change Google search results” from July 25, 2019.  The report explained that:
“A Google search can reveal negative information about anyone or any company. Since it's difficult to change those results, many small businesses are paying thousands to so-called reputation management companies to make negative web pages disappear.”
They further explained:
“One of the only ways to get Google to permanently remove a link from its search results is with a court order from a judge. CBS News sorted through thousands of these court orders and spotted small businesses from all across America trying to clean up their reputations. But we also spotted a problem: Dozens of the court documents were fakes.”
If you get a chance to watch the video it shows that the fraudsters simply cut and pasted images of the court stamps and judges signatures.  Thus here is yet another example of how the authentication method of signatures and blue rubber stamps is outdated. 

We have posted many articles on this type of problem before. But, I want to offer another idea?  Why not set up a new “verified electronic copy” service with fees that Google and others could pay to the court to receive a verified copy … with ideally an electronic signature.  The fee would very likely be passed along by Google to the persons/companies who legitimately should have their web page/link removed.  And of course, the fee rule could allow for the court to issue a waver.

So accurate information, problems for the fraudsters, and fee to help courts pay for the service.  What’s not to like?


Wednesday, May 29, 2019

E-Filing Gets Serious in New Jersey


Photo: Andreas Praefcke [CC BY 3.0 ]


We learned from a Law.com article that the New Jersey Appellate Court had affirmed an order enforcing an arbitration award after the plaintiff’s lawyer “failed to use New Jersey’s eCourts system to electronically file its demand for a trial de novo and to pay the filing fee”.  Discussion follows below.




Monday, July 16, 2018

E-Filing Used for Theft and Some Remediation Ideas


Thanks to a message via ImageSoft, we learned of a Florida Bar News article describing how a law office manager used the system to “file papers in a foreclosure case” and then took $130,000 that was “left over after the foreclosure sale”.  We discuss the actions taken by the E-Filing Authority and more below…



Friday, May 4, 2018

US Federal Court PACER Fees Litigation Decision Discussed

US District Court - Great Falls, Montana



We haven’t commented on the news from late March 2018 on the decision regarding the US Federal Court’s use of the fees collected for their PACER public records access systems.  We share some of our thoughts below.


Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Millions and Millions Served

An original McDonald's Restaurant




When I was young, the US fast food restaurant, McDonald’s would display that they had sold over 1 million and later 2 million hamburgers (see picture at the left).  Court E-filing has been like that.  Slow adoption at first.  But now after 20 years, there are now millions of E-filings recorded.


Thursday, August 10, 2017

This and That in Court Technology – August, 2017

https://goo.gl/PLWoi1


A big CTC-2017 promotion (especially if you are hungry), an upcoming JTC webinar, big E-filing news, Wyoming court automation fees introduced, space and cost savings by the US Federal Courts, and a little tip in this month’s court tech news amalgamation.


Friday, October 14, 2016

US Federal Courts PACER Fees Litigation

US Federal Courthouse Las Cruces NM

An article posted at qz.com (Quartz) discusses the court case regarding fees for the public use of the US Federal Courts PACER system.  The article notes:
“the paywall that surrounds Pacer is facing what may be its most serious test since the service emerged 28 years ago. Judge Ellen Huvelle of the US district court in Washington DC is expected to decide in the coming days whether a lawsuit accusing the government of setting Pacer fees at unlawfully high rates can proceed. 
The case, which is seeking class-action certification, is being led by three nonprofits: the National Veterans Legal Service Program, the National Consumer Law Center, and the Alliance for Justice. Each group says it has downloaded documents from Pacer and incurred charges alleged to exceed the cost of providing the records. All say the setup violates the E-Government Act of 2002, which authorizes the judiciary to “prescribe reasonable fees”—and which the plaintiffs argue should limit the government to charge users “only to the extent necessary” to make the information available.”
The full article is worth reading because it provides some explanation of fee waivers and, the total amount of revenue generated that supports court automation that is not provided by Congress in budget appropriation.  We would also point out that there are additional issues such as costs relating to data privacy, redaction, and management that are not addressed in the article.

Friday, March 4, 2016

A List of State Court E-Filing Fees

Bill Raftery and I did some research this week that we want to share.  I have uploaded a new list for E-filing links.  But this time we have tried to include the costs/fees that are associated with the services.

Please share in the comments below if we made any mistakes or omissions so that everyone has the best information.

Click here to view/download the PDF list document - Updated, March 9, 2016.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Rwanda Court Pre-Filing E-Filing System

Chief Justice of Rwanda, Prof. Sam Rugege

Earlier this year I visited the courts in Kigali, Rwanda.  They showed me their E-filing system that I didn’t really understand until now.


Monday, March 30, 2015

New “Chip” Credit Cards Will Change Usage Liability for Courts


The COSCA/NACM Joint Technology Committee has issued a new resource bulletin, “EMV and Credit Card Liability: What Courts Need to Know”.  As discussed last year in a CTB article, this mandatory change is coming in October, 2015.


Thursday, February 19, 2015

This and That in Court Tech – A Frozen February, 2015 Edition


Our regular compilation of news and notes regarding the world or court technology follows.  In this edition we note the new CTC 2015 topic survey, Pennsylvania online payments, password technology replacement, online dispute resolution recommendations in the UK, more on court related scamming activity, more AmCad fallout, and the ServeCon conference.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Credit Card Payment Tech - Change is coming in 2015

Three new ways of paying by credit card are coming (well, two for our international court friends).  So courts should begin planning for this conversion in 2015.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Court Case Management Systems Part 15: Financials – Public Requirements

Part 15:  Yes, courts have to deal with money.  And the form of money has changed in recent years (and change too, of course).  We will discuss the implications for CCMS in this edition as well as something we missed in Part 14 of our series, surcharges.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Court Case Management Systems: Financials Part 14 – Case Related Requirements

A "hi-tech" court counter
In the 14th part of our CCMS series we present Part I of our discussion regarding the case related requirements of court case financial tracking.

Friday, May 23, 2014

This and That in Court Technology – End of May, 2014

See Riverside eFax article below.
News includes a state court E-filing projects status update, a USA Federal Court eVoucher system, UK courts select a new CCMS, eFax filing for indigents in Riverside, California, and Rhode Island court electronic services fees.