COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The Cobb County chief judicial circuit judge announced a judicial emergency on Wednesday that will be in effect for the next 30 days.
According to officials, a software conversion has caused a lot of confusion and inaccuracies that have led to the dysfunction of the Cobb County Superior Court Clerk's Office.
An anonymous employee with the superior court stated that the clerk made the decision to switch over to the new system without notifying other staff.
The clerk faced backlash in December when employees claimed there was a nearly three-month backlog in their online court filings, with some calling for the clerk to resign. It remains unclear if the judicial emergency and December's backlog are directly related.
What this means
The software system helped keep information on cases in order for their next case of action. The switch to the new system happened on June 24.
According to a filing, a vendor informed the court that it was "not given adequate time to integrate the e-filing system with Icon."
Since most of the filings for court cases did not switch over in time, staff had to manually enter all filings for every case in the county into the system, which affected the process and speed.
11Alive's Joe Ripley spoke with Emory Law professor Jonathan Nash, who added the issues affect judges, attorneys and civil and criminal defendants.
"I may have to know when something else happened. I may have to access the court files to know that. I can't do that. Then I don't know when the deadline is. If the deadline passes, that could have ramifications. I've lost the chance to make an argument," he said. "We just don't have any faith that the system right now is working. And if we didn't take the time to backtrack and look at this, a bench warrant would have been issued. He would have been arrested and taken to jail and held for who knows how long because he missed a court date he knew nothing about."
Attorney Tom Salata says he's been left in the dark for weeks because of the e-filing switch, which started back in June.
"It's going to fix some things and help some things, but these are going to be problems we're going to be dealing with for a long time," Salata said.
How this impacts the court and you
- Judges, attorneys, judicial assistants and other court staff cannot view important court documents filed both before and after the system conversion.
- Law enforcement cannot view protective orders and bench warrants within the system and cannot enforce them for violations.
- The conversion disrupted case numbering, internal filing practices, courtroom procedures, and other critical court functions.
- Notices from the court have not been sent, sent to incorrect addresses or included inaccurate information for time and location of court hearings.
- Court calendars were not published on time, resulting in people being unaware of what happens in the court.
- Judges and attorneys don't understand what cases have been scheduled because of the system.
- Documents that have been filed don't have the correct dates, which creates confusion.
- Attorneys could be missing deadlines for their clients.
- Some cases that were open were marked closed, and some of the original documents in some cases might have been marked as lost.
- Several criminal defendants were told they did not have a court date even though a date had been set, leading to barely avoiding a bench warrant and more.
- It's unclear if jury duty notices have been impacted.
Attorneys and other judicial staff have been informed about the issues.
The emergency order grants relief and suspends deadlines.
The order stated, "During this emergency period, the Court trusts that all litigants and their attorneys will continue to be understanding and professional with one another in dealing with any issues arising from the emergency."
Chief Judge A. Gregory Poole wishes and hopes the situation will improve, but if not, the chief judge is prepared to issue another emergency order if necessary.
11Alive has reached out to the clerk of the superior court for a response to the issue but has not received a response.