2017 State of the Court

Services Restored and Expanded, Constraints Still Exist A message from the Presiding Judge, Raymond L. Haight III and Court Executive Officer, Nancy CS Eberhardt The San Bernardino Superior Court serves the largest county in the United States. It has 14 courthouses, as far as 145 miles apart, that spread over 20,000 square miles; serving 2,127,735 residents. When the residents of San Bernardino County cannot settle their disputes alone, they turn to our court. Addressing the needs of millions of litigants and other court users, the court resolves monetary disputes and ensures public safety, all while protecting our constitutional rights. At the start of the last state budget crisis, our court was already ‘doing more, with less.’ The Great Recession caused our court to respond in a two-phased approach, which included court closures and other severe cost saving measures. Nevertheless, our court maintained a strong record of minimal case backlog, and achieved a number of efficiencies. While our court’s budget still presents challenges to provide adequate court services, we have put forth a notable effort to fulfill our commitment to our community. Within the last year, we improved access by expanding and streamlining public hours, restored staffing numbers and opened courtrooms in case types most needed by our community. We provided community outreach through the Court/Clergy Conference, hosted legislative and Judicial Council staff, the Department of Finance, and made countless presentations to community organizations and the County Bar Association. We have restored limited services to the residents of Needles and provided the option to appear remotely by two-way video conferencing; a service that will soon be available to the residents of Big Bear Valley. The Self-Help Resource Center has expanded to Needles and now serves seven locations and holds numerous workshops that help better prepare litigants for trial. And although we have experienced significant challenges during the first implementation phase of the Odyssey case management system, we worked hard and succeeded in improving the system vastly in the past year. While work still needs to be done, many critical functions have been addressed and will continue to be improved with concrete solutions.

State of the Court Report 1