Overall, Shows a Slowdown In Things, Consonant with the Economy.
The California Judicial Council has issued its “Statewide Caseload Trends: 2001-2001 through 2009-2010,” a comprehensive report that tracks 2009-2010 fiscal year (FY) statistics as well as 10-year trends.
Here is what we found interesting from the 2009-2010 statistics:
*The California Supreme Court issued 96 written opinions during this FY;
*The overwhelming portion of petitions for review or original writ requests directed to the supreme court emanated from the criminal area;
*The supreme court only depublished 4 Court of Appeal decisions during the FY (way down from past years, such as 1990 where over 100 opinions were depublished);
*Statewide, 9% of the Court of Appeal decisions were certified for publication/partial publication (our local Santa Ana appellate court clocked in right around there, while the Fifth District was lower by about half);
*Civil processing for civil unlimited cases was 72% within 12 months, 87% within 18 months, and 93% within 24 months;
*The Third District Court of Appeal had the highest number of filings/dispositions per justice (27% higher than the statewide average for other intermediate appellate courts), whereas the First District had the lowest number of per-justice filings/dispositions;
*The statewide average of pending appeals per justice was 129 as of June 30, 2009, but decreased 9% to 118 as of June 30, 2010;
*After being heavily backlogged for a number of years, our local Fourth District, Division 3 is among the top intermediate appellate courts when it comes to time for processing appeals of civil cases; and
*As far as unlimited civil case dispositions, a huge percentage was disposed of through settlement/pretrial motions, and only about .63% went to a jury trial and only about 11.56% proceeded to a bench trial (although these percentages are not quite precise based on the statistical disposition “lag,” but do give some idea of the overall amount of civil litigation that does not get resolved through actual trials).
Here is a link to the report for you statisticians or readers desiring more detailed information. (There are is an Appendix with a lot of drill-down information.)