Superior Court to Merge With Municipal Courts
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LOS ANGELES — Ending nearly nine years of controversy and speculation, officials announced Friday that the Los Angeles Superior and 24 Municipal Court systems will merge into a single Superior Court on Jan. 22.
It took three votes over the years to get it done. Each time, the Municipal Court judges voted overwhelmingly to merge, but Superior Court judges would never go along in sufficient numbers for passage. This time they did: 153-75.
“This is the first time the Superior Court judges have been able to make an informed decision,” said Presiding Judge Victor E. Chavez of his colleagues.
In June 1998, California voters passed Proposition 220, which allowed judges in the state’s 58 counties to decide whether to unify their two-tier systems. Los Angeles is the 55th county to unify its trial courts.
The Los Angeles Superior Court is already the largest trial court of general jurisdiction in the world.
Under unification, the Superior Court will increase its number of judges from 303 to 563 and its number of employees from about 2,300 to nearly 5,000.
But the number of cases it will have to handle will increase from 302,324 to 2,719,458.
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