NEW YORK, Dec 29 — The Great Recession may be showing signs of easing, but the legal fallout from the financial troubles, the numbers suggest, may have only just begun.
New York courts are closing the year with 4.7 million cases — the highest tally ever —offering a preview of the recession-related cases showing up in courts across the nation.
According to new statistics, New York state’s judges are dealing with tens of thousands of cases involving not only bad debts and soured deals, but also indirect implications of economic stresses, such as charges of violence in families torn apart by lost jobs and homes in jeopardy.
This year, contract disputes in the state were up 9 per cent from last year, while home foreclosure filings increased 17 per cent. While serious crime remained low, cases involving charges such as assault by family members were up 18 per cent.
Judges and lawyers said the tales behind the cases, including low-level offences such as subway turnstile-jumping and petty theft, are often a barometer of bad times.
They said the data showed that courts nationally would be working through the recession’s consequences for years.
“Society’s problems come to us,” New York’s chief judge Jonathan Lippman said. “We are the emergency room for society.”
Florida officials said there were some 400,000 foreclosure filings this year, an increase of 446 per cent since 2006.
In Arizona, officials said eviction cases have tripled in the last year, contract disputes are up 77 per cent over the last two years, and there is a notable increase in cases seeking to commit people for mental health treatment because of stress-related conditions.
“The New York experience is representative. That’s what we are seeing here,” said chief justice John Broderick Jr of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, adding that many divorce, petty crime and domestic violence cases seem to have their roots in financial troubles.
Ohio court official Steve Hollon, president of the Conference of State Court Administrators, said judicial officials nationally had noticed a growing number of people saying their circumstances were so desperate that they could not afford lawyers, turning virtually every kind of case into a journey through the economy’s rough edges.
Court administrators said the flood was likely to be only the first wave of recession-related cases because courtroom battles take time to brew.
They said they were bracing themselves for more lawsuits over business disputes, foreclosures, evictions and family disputes as the financial and human costs of the downturn continued to be revealed.
Nationally, court administrators said budget pressures are forcing them to do more with less. That is certain to be the challenge for New York’s 1,253 state judges, said the state’s chief administrative judge Ann Pfau.
With legal emergencies everywhere, Pfau said: “We’re going to have to be making choices.”
Judge Anil Singh of the Manhattan Civil Court said that, from his Bench, it was hard to see signs of a recovery.
“I would describe it as a train wreck,” he said, “and I think it’s going to get worse for the next couple of years.” — NYT
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