A Look Back
In his 2005 State of the Judiciary speech, Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard reported: “For most of Indiana history, we communicated largely by tacking rules up on courthouse bulletin boards. But beginning this year rules adopted for the operation of local courts will be posted on the Internet and follow a uniform format so that citizens and lawyers who travel outside their home counties can have a fighting chance at finding and understanding them.”
With this goal in mind, Chief Justice Shepard had previously authorized the establishment of a Task Force to make recommendations on the numbering, promulgation, and maintenance of local rules in Indiana. Judge Margaret G. Robb, the newly elected Chief Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals, headed up that effort.
Judge Robb laid out the game plan in an article published in the Indiana Court Times Spring 2005 issue: “Trial Rule 81 and it’s accompany order sets out the procedures for noticing rule changes, receiving comments, and posting the final changes before the effective date. It also allows for deviations in the schedule in situations necessary for good cause or in specific cases where an exception is warranted (note- this is not intended to be a way to avoid compliance). The local rules will be numbered to follow state level rules for ease of use. No longer will there be Standing Orders, that is, generic orders not entered in individual cases. All courts of record in each county will have one set of uniform local rules, with only limited exceptions for geographical nuances. And all rules will be posted on the Web as well as in Courthouses. While this seems to be a monumental task, the results will be beneficial to litigants, attorneys and the courts. Remember, help is available. Together we can make this change for the betterment of our judicial system.”
Actually Judge Robb was correct when she called it a monumental task. Indiana has 92 counties with varying degrees of technological savvy, support staff, and judicial priority for posting local court rules on the internet. We requested that courts send their local court rules as an email attachment in Word format. Some courts did not have an electronic version but only had a hard copy of their local rules, which were sent by the good old US Postal Service, or snail mail in cyber-space parlance. We then scanned, or re-typed in Word format, these rules and posted them on the Indiana judicial website.
The format established for local court rules was: “LR-49-AR-15-1” consisting of five groups of characters. They are (1) “LR” indicating that it is a local rule; (2) the two-digit county identifier; (3) the state rule to which the local rule pertains; (4) the number of the state level rule to which the local rule relates; and, (5) the number assigned by the local courts to indicate the local sequence.
Trial Rule 81 does not mandate that a county have any local rules beyond the few that have been specifically ordered by the Supreme Court, namely: special judge selection in civil cases pursuant to TR 79 (H), criminal case assignment and selection of successor judges pursuant to Criminal Rule 2.2, court reporter services pursuant to Administrative Rule 15, a county caseload allocation plan pursuant to Administrative Rule 1(E), and a procedure for summoning jurors pursuant to Jury Rule 4.
Where We Are Now
Every county now has local court rules posted on the Indiana Judicial Website at courts.in.gov. Many courts also post their local court rules on their county website. So we have accomplished the goals of transparency and ease of access. However, some counties have a little more work to do in meeting the local court rule requirements set by the Supreme Court. As new rules are adopted, or existing rules are amended, we attempt to notify those courts and assist them in becoming compliant with Supreme Court rules. We ask all judges to check their own local court rules and see if a new rule should be adopted or an existing rule amended. State Court Administration staff is available to assist as needed.
Trial courts now generally follow the timetable for adopting new, and amending existing, rules set forth pursuant to Trial Rule 81(C), which schedule can be found at: courts.in.gov/rules/local/standards-2nd-amend(113005).pdf.
This schedule sets a date of June 1 as the last date to post notice of a rule adoption or amendment, with a required comment period of at least 30 days. The established effective date for the new or amended rule is the following January 1. Courts may find good cause to deviate from this schedule as allowed by Trial Rule 81(D). But, most courts are accustomed to this schedule and now seldom require such a deviation.
Mission Accomplished
We have successfully accomplished the stated goal of posting on the Indiana Judicial Website all of the Indiana local court rules for each county. Local court rules follow a format that is uniform across the state. Citizens and lawyers who travel outside their home counties now have much more than a fighting chance at finding and understanding them. No longer will someone be able to tell Judge Robb, as did one Tippecanoe County trial lawyer, that she wasn’t allowed to see the local court rules from another county because “she wasn’t from here.”
So, while the quest for perfection continues, it seems safe to proclaim: Mission Accomplished.