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When Luzerne County started purging inactive civil cases four years ago, more than 23,000 pending legal actions were on the docket.
With the latest round of thousands of stale cases processed by county Court of Common Pleas Judge Lesa S. Gelb on Friday, the total number of outstanding civil filings should now hover around 10,000, according to court Administrator Michael Shucosky.
“It’s often said that justice delayed is justice denied, so we’re very happy as a court that we’ve tried to keep things moving in our system,” Shucosky said.
Cases become eligible for purging if they have had no activity or filings for two years, Shucosky said.
Ideally the initiators of civil cases would file a termination on their own once they decide they are not proceeding, but Shucosky said many don’t.
The outstanding cases include claims involving car crashes and credit cards, landlord-tenant disputes and tax assessment appeals, he said.
Closure is in the defendants’ interest because litigation still on the docket can be flagged when they are seeking employment or loans, he said.
“Having these cases pending could hurt people,” he said.
The purging also reduces the volume of records that must be maintained by the prothonotary’s office, he said.
For the latest batch, court administration staffers reviewed more than 6,000 files to determine if they were eligible, he said.
Workers in the Judicial Services and Records Division, which includes the prothonotary’s office, mailed more than 15,000 notices to attorneys and parties involved in all identified cases, he said.
“The prothonotary employees worked particularly hard on this project,” Shucosky said. “It’s a very good example of the courts cooperating with a county agency on an important matter.”
To avoid termination Friday, inactive suit filers had to file a statement of intention to proceed and must appear before Gelb early next year to explain the lack of activity in their pending litigation. At that time, their cases may be scheduled for trial or an arbitration hearing, Shucosky said.
He estimated around 200 of the thousands of inactive cases will proceed.
“Sometimes this is a reminder for attorneys and litigants to move their cases forward so they don’t languish in the system,” Shucosky said.
Keeping real estate tax assessment appeals advancing has been a priority for taxing bodies because refunds for assessment reductions date back to the year challenges were filed, which had resulted in past big-ticket, multiple-year surprises, he said.
Approximately 6,000 to 6,500 new civil cases are filed in the county court annually, Shucosky said.
Officials have said the annual purging stopped after 2005, during the administration of then-prothonotary Jill Moran. County Judicial Services and Records Division Head Joan Hoggarth worked with the courts to restore the purge — officially known as a “call of the list” — after the home rule government structure took effect in 2012.