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Bar News - September 5, 2003 Opinions - Who Cares if the Court System Can't Afford to be Open? By: David M. Gottesman Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from a commentary published in the Aug. 25 Union Leader by Nashua attorney David M. Gottesman. It is reprinted with the author’s permission. It was written before the reprieve of layoffs and restoration of jury sessions was announced. However, even with the new agreement on budget flexibility, court funding remains tight and court services are still limited at many locations, including Hillsborough Superior Court in Nashua. Why is the counter closing, you may ask? Why can’t spouses get their divorce orders from the court for 30 or 60 days? Why have jury trials been cut from the calendar for two to three months of the year? Why do businesses have to wait for court orders in non-jury cases? Why did a judge recently order the dismissal of a felony motor vehicle case because there is not enough money to run the court system to give the person a timely jury trial? It is because the budget has been cut so deeply that the courts, which were already in financial crisis, are now in crisis overload. To survive at all, cuts in court expense, particularly personnel cuts, are being made in the core staff at each of the courts in the state. The superior court in Nashua, for example, recently cut 12 people from its already reduced staff. This is typical of what is going on around the state. The system cannot run solely on the backs of the few remaining dedicated employees that are left, as their backs and spirits will be broken before long. These people cannot do their work, answer the phones or assist the public with the resources available to them. There is just not enough time in the day. Until some of our legislators take a tour of the court system to see just how things are being run and what is truly required to get the job done, it seems as though the vendettas that began with the Claremont decision and continued into the impeachment proceedings of a certain member of the New Hampshire Supreme Court will continue to dictate budget decisions. The perception that the court system is being punished by the Legislature is no longer just a perception, but a reality. To attract good judges to the bench, it is necessary to pay them well and to supply them with the resources to do their jobs. To provide the public with a forum to resolve civil disputes, people must be given timely access to the courts, and decisions have to be timely rendered by the judge or jury and then processed so that the parties to the conflict learn the result in a timely fashion. Prosecutors cannot be subjected to situations where criminal prosecutions are dismissed simply because the court system cannot afford to gather juries to hear the cases so as to be timely. So who cares about this? I care about this, many lawyers in this state care about this, and the public should care about this. Furthermore, I am sure that judges at every level in this state care about this. Otherwise they would never have taken their oath of commitment to meting out justice in the courts of the state of New Hampshire. It is the public that is affected by these issues, and many of our legislators do not seem to remember that the courts are established to serve the public. Without a healthy court system our society will have a great weakness as consumers will lose their voice, prosecutors will lose their purpose and good lawyers will never be interested in becoming judges. I beg those involved in making any decisions that affect the budget and fiscal stability of the court system to stop thinking about punishing the court system — and by extension the general public — by not funding it properly. Instead, our legislators should refocus on making our court system one that will make us all proud.
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