I’m sure that we have all heard that the State, City and Court budget problems are not due to Prop. 13, the elimination of taxes on corporations and the wealthy, or any other cause except welfare programs and waste in unionized civil service functions. This week I learned some about what really goes on, at least within the Court system.
I needed to find an old paternity case, which had been filed in Santa Monica. The clerk in the Santa Monica courthouse was able to find the case on the computer system with ease (I guess all that data entry is part of the wasteful unionized labor going on behind the scenes). She told me that the clerk’s records indicated that the file had been sent to the Archives section, in the Hall of Records.
So, one day after morning L&M (not even slightly like S&M – really) I strolled over to the Archives section. Again, a clerk initiated a search, and was able to find the “incoming files” record, and assured me that the file had not yet been sent by Santa Monica to the Archives. So, back to Santa Monica, armed with that information.
This could have incited the Santa Monica clerks to give me a more ‘businesslike’ response, like shrugging their shoulders and asking “Whaddya want me to do aboudit?” Instead, the horribly inefficient, unionized, lazy, etc. etc. clerk asked me to wait. About 20 minutes later, the clerk returned with a printout of records (wastefully generated at taxpayer expense) which indicated that files from number SF xxx xxx through SF xxx xxx (numbers bracketing my file #) had been shipped to the Archives on October 30, 2009, in “box #xxx”. The clerk said that using the box number might make it easier for the Archives people to find the file. He then gave me a number to call to talk to an Archives supervisor.
Rather than going back downtown, I called the supervisor. Yes, she said, the box number would make it easier to confirm whether the file had arrived. After another 15 minute wait she came back on the line and confirmed that box xxx was there, still on a pallet, wrapped in plastic, on the loading dock, because they hadn’t had a chance, or the manpower, since October to intake it. Because it still sat on the loading dock, the incoming files records had not yet been updated, so the original archives clerk who said it wasn’t there was actually working from the most current information available to him.
With a request for a file from the box, that pallet apparently goes to the head of the line for processing. The supervisor told me that she hopes that the file will be on her desk by lunchtime today, so that I can review it this afternoon.
Through all of this, not one of the clerks complained about my request, my insistence that they look further, or about too much work to do. But the supervisor was apologetic in every sentence when talking to me. “I’m really very sorry, but we’ve just lost 40% of our staff, and you can see from boxes sitting on the loading dock that we didn’t have enough people before the cuts.” She didn’t ask me to call my County Supervisor, or the presiding judge. She just apologized for the conditions under which all the clerks labor.
While the Santa Monica clerk was looking for the records, on my second trip, a long line of people formed, waiting to see a clerk. Santa Monica courthouse now has many more clerk windows than clerks to fill them. Just as the clerk returned with the shipping records, a man walked up to the window, apparently familiar with the procedure and asserting priority to cut to the head of the line. He pushed through the window a bag from Subway. The clerk accepted the sandwich and started to deal with it, even as he dealt with the line that had built up behind me. Multi-tasking indeed.
I wonder how many clients lose how much time, or incur how many bills, because we are slashing away at the muscle which makes the court system function. When we cut them all, leaving just a skeleton of a court system, will any justice be dispensed?
Thomas M. Hall
Law Offices of Michael L. Abrams
11766 Wilshire Blvd., Sixth Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 268-1000