San Francisco Personal Injury Attorney On Court Budget Cuts

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco?s Superior Court is facing the same budgetary issues that the entire judiciary is facing in California and it?s impacting access to justice.

Since 2008, San Francisco courts have cut staff by 31% and closed eleven civil courts. And all of those cuts took place prior to the budgetary shortfall that is now facing state legislatures. The state is now considering an additional $544 million additional cuts to state courts, which will only aggravate the problems brought on by the lack of courts and court staff.

What this will mean for individuals, and as the San Francisco paper points out, it is creating a two-tier justice system ? one full of lengthy delays, a lack of resources, and postponed trial dates. And another system where arbitration is utilized far more extensively, which tends to favor corporate defendants and repeat players.

And as more and more courts close and budgets are cut, parties in personal injury actions or any type of litigation will find it harder and harder to have their day in court, so to speak.

The specific fear among San Francisco injury attorneys, and personal injury attorneys throughout the state, is that trials may be pushed out far in excess of our current fast-track deadlines.

And this will in turn cause settlement to become more and more difficult. In other words, if a case is set for trial three years from a given date, what incentive does the defense have in settling the claim in a reasonable time and manner?

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