A long wait for Justice

Long lines. Waits of two to three hours or more. Irate customers.

Sound familiar?

The surprise is that this time it's not an office at the Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety.

It's the Las Vegas Township Justice Court clerk's office, where people go to file small claims and civil actions and to apply for or defend evictions. It's also where nontraffic fines must be paid.

A series of events and problems have merged over the last couple of months to create a bureaucratic logjam, Justice Court Administrator Steve Morris admits.

He said he is frustrated knowing he is powerless to solve much of the dilemma until perhaps late this summer, when several new staff positions are expected to be approved by the county.

An earlier effort to streamline the operation through an electronic numbering system has been of marginal value lately because there simply haven't been enough experienced clerks to handle the workload.

But even when the office is fully staffed -- which Morris said should be achieved with a new hire today -- and that staff is fully trained, about the best that can be achieved is an eventual return to a system with an average 50-minute wait.

With the wait now two to three hours, some runners for law firms and others who routinely use the clerk's office stop in to pick up a number at least a couple of hours before they know they are going to need it. They figure that when they return, the office may be close to calling their number.

"We stop issuing numbers at 5 p.m., but last Tuesday it took until 7:30 p.m. to process the last customer," Morris said.

He explained that the front counter has been the entry-level position at the court and several of the clerks recently have been promoted to other court jobs or have transferred to better-paying positions elsewhere in the county.

"We've had six turnovers in the last six weeks and almost all of the staff at the front counter are new," he said, acknowledging that their inexperience has added to the sluggish handling of cases.

Other staff members have been stricken by the flu, Morris said.

Holidays and light calendars at the beginning of the year to guard against potential Y2K problems have been replaced now with larger calendars for the judges, meaning larger workloads for clerks. Add to that the normally heavy time of month for filing evictions and the subsequent filing of challenges to the evictions, and the crowds have blossomed over the past few weeks.

Perhaps the largest culprit is the workload itself. Morris said civil filings have increased 76 percent in the past two years and evictions are up 44 percent.

During the same time, only one new employee was added to the clerk's office.

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