Bexar County’s Presiding Court System in civil district court will go away after 64 years following final rules approved by the Texas Supreme Court. The Lady Justice statue is shown atop a fountain in front of the Bexar County Courthouse.
Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News
State District Judge Christine Hortick hailed the final approval to changes to court rules by the Texas Supreme Court that will do away with Bexar County’s Presiding Court system. She had pushed for about two years to exit the Presiding Court system. She began handling her own individual docket March 1 after it became obvious the Supreme Court would approve new rules.
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A notice taped to the wall on the first floor of the Bexar County Courthouse directs litigants with cases before Judge Christine Hortick and Judge Nadine Nieto to go directly to their courtrooms rather than Presiding Court. Both judges exited the Presiding Court System on March 1 in anticipation of the Texas Supreme Court giving its final approval to court rule changes relating to the Presiding Court system.
Patrick Danner/Staff
The Texas Supreme Court is upending a Bexar County court system that has been in place for 64 years.
The county’s Presiding Court system could effectively disappear July 1 as a result of changes handed down by the high court on Friday. But at least one judge who supports the current way of doling out cases says the Supreme Court’s amendments don’t bar the system that’s been in place since 1962.
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Also known as central docketing, it assigns pretrial hearings to different judges rather than keeping cases with the same jurists all the way through the process. Critics say the system is cumbersome and wastes litigants’ time and money.
The Supreme Court gave its final approval to changes that, with exceptions, require a judge whose court is randomly assigned a case to take responsibility for it from the beginning of the case to its conclusion.
The state’s high court’s decision came about two years after state District Judge Christine Hortick in Bexar County provoked a furor by vowing to pull out of the Presiding Court system. She has described it as inefficient because attorneys have to rehash the basics of a case if they go before a different judge each time.
Hortick hailed the Supreme Court’s action.
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“This order clears up once and for all whether a District Court Judge in Bexar or any other Texas County can maintain an individual docket,” she said in a text message.
READ MORE: Bexar County Judge Christine Hortick goes rogue, rebels against civil court scheduling system
The rule changes are open to interpretation, however.
Judge Angelica Jimenez, the local administrative judge, said in an email Monday that she was pleased that the final amendments “do not prohibit our continued use of central dockets in the Presiding and Monitoring Court Systems to efficiently manage cases.” Monitoring Court handles pretrial matters in cases headed toward trial.
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“Because there is no prohibition of the current system, we will continue to rely on it to serve our community come July 1,” she said.
Jimenez added that the only significant change from previous practices is the ability of individual courts to decide not in participate in the system.
Hortlick disagrees with that interpretation, saying the changes don’t allow Presiding Court system “to continue to exist in its present form.”
Hortick of the 225th District Court and Judge Nadine Nieto of the 285th District Court left Bexar’s the case-management system at the beginning of this month after it became obvious that the Supreme Court was going to do make the rule changes.
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Notices taped to walls on the first floor of the Bexar Courthouse direct litigants with cases in those courts to go to those courtrooms rather than to Presiding Court.
Many of the 14 civil district judges in Bexar County had opposed doing away with Presiding Court.
Two of the judges spoke in favor of keeping the system during a hearing before the Supreme Court’s advisory committee last year.
Judge Rosie Alvarado of the 438th District Court said the central-docketing system has “many, many positives” and “allows for a greater number of cases to be heard each day by utilizing all of our available judges.”
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Judges in most Texas counties maintain their own dockets but Bexar and Travis are exceptions.
San Antonio attorney Adam Cortez, who has practiced in Bexar County for more than three decades, said he “couldn’t be happier” with the Supreme Court’s action. The Presiding Court system “needed to be abolished decades ago,” he said in a text message.
“It may be that the system worked at its inception but Bexar County is now the 15th most populous county in the United States and its citizens deserve a court system of responsible judges who manage a docket of cases and make rulings after reviewing all relevant facts and law from the inception of the case to its conclusion,” Cortez added.
He complained how parties get pretrial rulings from one judge only to have them reversed or altered by the judge who presides over the case at trial.
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Counties unable to comply with the amendments to court rules by July 1 may petition the Supreme Court for an extension.
RELATED: Bexar County judges clash with county over court staffing
Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai didn’t respond to a text message seeking comment by deadline, but he has said doing away with the Presiding Court system would require anywhere from $4 million to $9 million to pay for more courts and personnel.
“As a 26-year District Court judge, I am taking the position that such a rule would have a catastrophic effect in the way the dockets run, that the dockets can’t automatically shift out of a Presiding District Court system that is over 60 years old,” Sakai previously said. “The current Presiding system is legal, it’s viable, it’s efficient and it best serves the taxpayers and the people who use the system.”
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Hortick has expressed skepticism about the projected cost offered by Sakai.
Both Hortick and Nieto recently asked the county for additional funding to assist with the individual dockets that they’ve been operating.
County Manager David Smith recommended in a letter last Tuesday to Jimenez and Ryan Anderson, general counsel for the civil district courts, that the Commissioners Court hold off on the judges’ requests until the Supreme Court finalized the new rules. Commissioners are scheduled to hear the matter behind closed doors in executive session Tuesday.
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