MEETING MINUTES
Monday, JANUARY 8, 2001
1. Custody - Jan Yaw
Emergency Petitions. Attorneys are using emergency petitions to get a faster conference date. They are only to be used for emergencies. Judge Anderson said that expedited conferences can be obtained without it being an emergency. This can be added to the conference forms. Putting on the form that an expedited conference is necessary is okay with the judges.
2. Family Law - Tony Grieco
There are new Supreme Court rules on civility.
Tony says he has put together a notice for the family court section and will send it around. The idea is to set up a separate family court section.
Joy McCoy also brought up the new rules concerning civility which applies apparently to lawyers and judges.
3. Orphan's Court - Joe Rider
Rules committee is looking at Orphan's Court rules changes and this will be reported on by Gary Weber.
4. Commercial - Bill Knecht
Bill said there are two things to bring up. 1. Lawyers are not getting Orders timely. Judge Smith said the problem is with the Prothonotary's office. 2. With respect to arbitrations, some judges are handling these differently from others. There should be a uniform method. Judge Kieser says that he follows what the lawyers ask for in this regard.
5. President Report - Carl Barlett
The annual meeting is at 4:00 p.m. and Carl asked for a good attendance. The banquet is also mentioned.
6. Legal Services - Joe Campagna
He will talk about pro bono issues at the banquet and will give a short report.
7. Mediation - Tom Raup
Judge Anderson was asked how the Lycoming Mediation Program is going. Judge Anderson said that has met with some success. The people who work in the program are trained and certified under the new certification statute. Tom Raup said it would be a good idea to refer community disputes to the mediation program. Judge Anderson that he would make sure that a flier is put in the courthouse mail of attorneys so that they can be reminded of the existence of the program.
8. Rules Committee - Gary Weber
Gary indicated that the issue of privacy of family court opinions on the Web site has been resolved. Judge Anderson has been submitting opinions with the parties' initials substituted for the names, and that is working well.
Joe Rider asked Orphan's Court attorneys for suggestions on new rules and since there were no responses, there will be no changes. There does not seem to be a need for any changes at this time.
Criminal - There have been some suggestions for changes. Local rules have become less important since so much is now governed by state rule.
There will be discussion concerning criminal contempt (i.e. custody) rule as between Judge Anderson and Gary Weber. It is possible that a threatening notice of possible contempt might eliminate some of these matters in the family court arena.
Notices and meetings are being put on the website with respect to the Law Association.
9. Defense, Civil - Ed Mitchell
Ed Mitchell also talked about the delays in getting orders to attorneys.
Judge Kieser mentioned that there are some obstacles to using e-mail to send orders and discussed what those obstacles are.
Kevin Way asked that attorneys call him the next time an order is late. He would like to have examples of late orders so that he can define what the problem is.
There will be discussion with Eileen about use of e-mail, such as continuous requests. It is possible that perhaps some of the forms can be loaded and utilized through the e-mail system.
10. Judge Brown
Judge Brown indicated he is going over to the civil side except for one major criminal case, a capital matter.
11. Kevin Way - Court Administrator
A new case manager is going to be hired.
Eileen will be the third manager. Will hire a new daily court scheduling person. Eileen will work with scheduling criminal cases and other such matters. We now have several former county employees who are on the payroll of the state.
January 16 will start a protection from abuse database. When it is up and running, an officer would be able to call in on his radio and find out what' s in the second order. About 35 counties are doing this.
Allen Page is up and running on the first floor.
There will be a conference room in the basement for arbitrations and meetings. Contact Kevin Way for use.
12. Judge Kieser
Judge Kieser mentioned that Kevin Way gets credit for getting that extra person with respect to court administration. Hopefully this will help in developing electronic notices. There will be a training session coming up on the new PFA system.
Will try to make opinions searchable on the website.
Will try to put daily calendar on the website as well.
On case monitoring issues, there is a problem because in this county we will place a case on the list a year in advance but then another county judge from a different county will come along and trump that by attaching the attorney. This makes it difficult to stick with our list. Judge Kieser says perhaps the attorney should be "attached" as soon as the scheduling order goes out. Everybody indicated they would like to give this some thought.
Juvenile filing shows a significant decrease.
13. Judge Smith
Judge Smith indicated he will be the new family law judge and sees this as an elevation in position.
He will take that position and Orphan's Court cases as well.
206 Forms. Something is set and lawyers will fill in dates for the same date in order to get more than one matter heard on the original date set by the court scheduling administrator. The judge said that he will not sign such orders. However, an attorney can request the same date and ask for specific amount of time.
Code of civility will be enforced. Everybody should read.
14. Good and Welfare
Bill Knecht asked whether in a drug court setting, people have been rude to Judge Butts. Everyone said that they were not aware of this but Judge Brown indicated that he would talk to Judge Butts and see if it was a problem.
It was noted by Tom Raup that Clinton Smith will be seeking retention and that this was a good thing for the Bench, Bar and citizens of Lycoming County.