In Brief: The Columbus Bar Blawg

On May 20, 2011, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a new report — really two reports — a summary and a full report – detailing statistical trends in case filings in Ohio.  The full report can be found here and the summary can be found here. 

Among the findings:

Ten-year lows were also realized in all criminal and traffic categories in municipal and county courts, including the number of operating a vehicle while intoxicated cases, and in some civil categories such as small claims cases.

Franklin County Common Pleas Clerk of Courts Maryellen O’Shaughnessy published her annual report in early April 2011.  On page 7 of the report, a year-to-year comparison of new civil case filings found that:

* = These cases were previously filed under another category, then designated “Complex Litigation” cases by the court.

Among the other tidbits is this quote:

[Regarding electronic filing of court documents:] Our information technology team and other court and county personnel have been programming and testing components of a new E-filing system since mid-year 2010. We anticipate E-filing will be presented to our legal community in the summer of 2011, complete with training of this 21st century process and all its updated features.[Additionally], we continue to provide online access to redacted court documents back to July of 2009, a system that has been up and operational outside the Courthouse since December 2009.

Along those lines, the report notes that “In 2010, the Franklin County Clerk of Courts office imaged and auto-redacted 5,184,928 pages of court documents.”

What trends can we glean from these reports?  I’m not sure I can answer that question — but I can say that Franklin County’s overall numbers are consistent with the Statewide report.