Looks like California Officials aren’t out of the woods yet when it comes to the issue of expanding ER into more California courts. In the May 29th, 2008, edition of the Daily Journal, in an article by Linda Rapattoni that detailed how the current budget deficit was putting a hold on new judges, there was this piece of news towards the end of the article that caught COCRA’s attention.

“In a more controversial move, it [Senate Budget Subcommittee] also approved giving courts the authority to expand electronic reporting to all proceedings in family, probate and mental health courts as well as in law and motion proceedings. It is now used only in limited civil matters.

“Lobbyists for the roughly 8,000 court reporters in the state have fought off such moves since electronic reporting was introduced as an experiment in the mid-1980s. They say occasional equipment failures make electronic reporting unreliable and it actually requires more personnel, offsetting any potential savings.

“Legislative staff concluded that while it wouldn’t produce significant savings for the state, it would save litigants money because a recording costs between $10 and $20, while a written transcript often costs $300 or more.

“Michelle Castro, a lobbyist for the California State Council of Service Employees, which represents court reporters, said she did not think the proposal has much of a chance. “‘There’s not big momentum for it, at least I’m hoping there isn’t,’ Castro said.”

The Senate Subcommittee #4 has recommended budget trailer bill language to implement these changes.

The interesting thing here is the new tactic that ER proponents taking to push ER into more courts. Instead of emphasizing cost savings for the courts in terms of cuts to court reporter positions and replacing them with “cheaper” equipment, now they’re claiming that these moves would lead to cost savings for litigants as reflected in this bit from the article.

“Legislative staff concluded that while it wouldn’t produce significant savings for the state, it would save litigants money because a recording costs between $10 and $20, while a written transcript often costs $300 or more.

But what the legislative staff still doesn’t understand is that the cost to litigants do not end with this supposed “$10 and $20″ cost. Those litigants are still going to have to get those recordings transcribed and it’s going to cost them transcription fees. And if those transcripts turn out as bad as some of the ones I’ve seen, it will cost them even more in the long run in terms of more transcription fees in order to correct “the record.”

So, how is this a savings to California litigants?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 7:05 am and is filed under Electronic Recording. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.