While not explicitly calling for elimination of the Presiding Court system in Bexar and Travis counties, that’s essentially what the rules would do — a potential outcome that’s sparked strong disagreement within the legal community.
Under the current system, a civil case filed in state district court is randomly assigned to one of the county’s 14 courts. But pretrial hearings are scheduled on a central docket by a Presiding Court judge who typically assigns the hearings to other jurists.
Now, the state’s high court has given preliminary approval to proposed amendments to judicial administration rules, including one that requires a newly filed case “be randomly assigned to a judge authorized to preside over the case.”
The “originally assigned judge must maintain full responsibility for the case” from start to finish, unless there’s an official transfer of the case to another judge.
Judge Christine Hortick, who started the ball rolling for the changes, questions that. She says the changes would benefit those within the system, which she says forces litigants to rehash basic facts each time they go before a different judge, risking “retraumatizing the parties” — especially in cases involving children.
She welcomed the proposed changes.
“I’m pretty happy that the Supreme Court’s taking steps to address the concerns that I’ve had and other people have had about how cases are handled in Bexar County,” Hortick said in a telephone interview. She has a case pending before the Supreme Court on her bid to opt out of the Presiding Court system, also referred to as the central-docketing system.
“It’s awfully hard for parties to rely on consistent and predictable rulings when they might have one judge at today’s hearing, but a different judge at the next hearing, who may not know what happened at the first hearing,” he said. “It’s hard for me to see how assigning a different judge for each hearing throughout the life of a case promotes efficient and uniform justice in our courts.”
Blacklock has been pushing to hold judges accountable and this appears to be part of that effort.
The Supreme Court is inviting public comment on the proposed changes by March 1. Comments can be sent to rulescomments@txcourts.gov.
The court will issue an order finalizing the rules after March 1 and could change the proposed amendments in response to public comment. It expects the amendments to take effect July 1.
Counties that argue they can’t comply with the rules by then may petition the Supreme Court for an extension. The petition must explain why an extension is needed and propose an alternative date for the rules to take effect in the county.