Pandemic-Driven Civil Case Backlog Clears Slowly in Ohio Courts

Two years after the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Hamilton County, Ohio, is still digging itself out of a backlog of pending civil cases.

Every time the county—home of Cincinnati—tried to bring back jury trials, “Covid would flare back up,” Christopher A. Wagner, administrative judge for its Common Pleas Court, said of the height of the pandemic. “So we tried to bring back juries and we had to stop them. We brought them back again, and then we had to stop them.”

Hamilton County isn’t alone. Court systems across the country are grappling with backlogs caused by the pandemic over three years after it began, and Hamilton in particular has struggled compared to other larger Ohio counties.

“As much of a backlog as there was with civil [cases], a lot of the current resources are going toward trying to clear the backlogs of criminal and family so they can turn to civil,” said Paula Hannaford-Agor, project director for the Civil Justice Initiative with the National Center for State Courts.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Court has had one of the highest average percentages of over-age civil case rates—those that remained pending past the standards set by Ohio Supreme Court rules—of any of the state’s 10 most populous counties, according to data compiled by the state Supreme Court. The yearly rate is calculated by dividing the number of over-age cases in each month by the total number of pending cases, and then taking the average of the 12 months.

Hamilton’s rate has so far decreased in 2023, Wagner said, due to the county making a concerted effort to address the backlog. The over-age case civil case rate in Hamilton County is 7.2% so far in 2023—closer to the county’s pre-pandemic annual rates—compared to 11.2% in 2022 and 15% in 2021, according to statistics provided by court spokesperson Deidre Schardine and the state Supreme Court.

While the county has a ways to go, “the positive trajectory in our overage rate reinforces our determination to continue refining our processes and implementing effective strategies for timely case resolution,” Schardine wrote in an email.

Discovery Halted

Over the past decade, 8.8% of Hamilton’s overall caseload was over age. Cuyahoga County, home of Cleveland, had 8.9% over age in the past decade. However, Hamilton outpaced Cuyahoga during the pandemic, according to the state Supreme Court’s data.

By comparison, Franklin County, which includes most of Columbus, had a rate of 5.6%.

Hamilton County’s judges attributed the jump in over-age cases to a number of issues. This included a backlog of criminal cases, many of which were prioritized due to speedy trial concerns, said Common Pleas Judge Terry Nestor.

Wagner, who took the bench in 2021, also pointed out that discovery became incredibly difficult to conduct, especially early in the pandemic.

“They couldn’t get a hold of their clients. They couldn’t get a hold of witnesses. They couldn’t conduct depositions, and people’s businesses were closed,” Wagner said. “And that stopped all the discovery process for a while.”

There was also the fact that jury trial dates weren’t concrete, as schedules remained in flux for years. Not having a firm trial date can take away some of the pressure litigants face to settle their cases, Wagner said.

Still, some large counties’ courts weathered the virus better than others. The over-age rate in Butler County, which borders Hamilton County and includes many of Cincinnati’s suburbs, was at its highest during the pandemic in 2021 when it hit 0.7%

And in Stark County, home of Canton, the over-age rate has hovered around 0% for the past decade and stayed consistent during the pandemic.

Stark County Administrative Common Pleas Judge Natalie R. Haupt attributed that to the court never really stopping trials during the pandemic—they used another building with more space as a remote courthouse—and generally encouraging a fast pace with its civil cases.

While the court may not have a full-on “rocket docket” that encourages rapid disposition of cases, Haupt said the judges do handle cases more quickly than other places and let attorneys know that trial dates mean something.

“Continuances are not freely granted because when we set some dates, we do have input from the attorneys and ask them specifically within the guidelines what they think the case schedule should look like,” she said.

How to Address

Still, courts across the state have found ways to lower the number of outstanding cases. For one, the state dedicated $10.2 million in grants of the state’s American Rescue Plan Act funding toward courts addressing their backlog of all types of cases. The state gave money for pre-trial programs, check-in kiosks, and updates to case management systems, among other projects, according to a news release from October 2022.

The Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, for example, received $425,000 to help hire two bailiffs for a visiting judge program and to update courtroom technology, Schardine said.

And the Butler County Common Pleas Court received over $180,000 to hire an investigator and a file room clerk.

In Hamilton County, Wagner said the increased use of technology like Zoom to conduct conferences has also helped move cases along more quickly. So has hiring an additional magistrate and using retired judges to handle some civil cases.

Other courts across the state have taken similar steps. But Hannaford-Agar said one of the true ways to attack a backlog is to ensure the judges are controlling the pace of cases, something the Ohio Supreme Court also advocates for.

“It does require your bench, your judges, to think differently about the cases because if you’re not setting a trial date until the attorneys complete everything they need to do and do pretrial motions, then everything’s in the control of the attorneys,” Hannaford-Agar said.

Whatever the larger Ohio courts are doing seems to be working. In addition to Hamilton County’s drop, the over-age rate for civil cases so far in 2023 has fallen to 7.4% in Cuyahoga County, according to the latter’s Administrative and Presiding Common Pleas Judge Brendan J. Sheehan.

“We are making great progress, but there is still work to be done and we are up to the task,” Sheehan wrote in an email.