Legislative reforms and mediated lawsuits are responsible for a decline in the number of appeals and court actions handled by the Oklahoma Supreme Court over the past few years.
The Tulsa World examined eight years of Supreme Court filings, opinions and settlement conferences from records obtained through the Open Records Act.
Between 1999 and 2006, the total number of cases handled by the Supreme Court declined 28 percent from 1,874 cases to 1,354. At the same time, the number of opinions rendered by the court on a yearly basis also dropped.
In 2006, the court rendered 99 opinions. The court has rendered as many as 250 opinions in one year, which was 2000.
But Chief Justice James Winchester said there is still plenty of work to be done.
“I don’t see anyone working any less,” Winchester said. “It is one thing to see these numbers, but if you would look at the files and see the detail of the work, a person would understand the work that is required.
“I think that with less cases we are working cases more thoroughly and in that regard the cases we are getting are better developed when they come to us,” Winchester said.
Appellate judges spend 50 hours to 70 hours a week reviewing, researching and deciding on appeals, said Keith Rapp, chief judge of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals, an intermediate appellate court that handles 90 percent of Oklahoma’s civil appeals.
“It sounds like we are doing all the work but we have an easier job compared to the state Supreme Court, which must determine the hard issues of law and statewide importance,” Rapp said. “We have a substantial work load but we are not a law-interpreting court like the Supreme Court. We are an error-correcting court.”
The state Supreme Court justices are paid $131,100 a year. Winchester receives $140,000 as chief justice.
All civil appeals, workers’ compensation reviews and tax levy protests go directly to the Supreme Court, which hears the cases or assigns them to a lower court.
Out of 308 requests to the court for a full hearing in 2006, the justices granted 32. That’s 48 percent fewer requests being granted when compared to 1999, records show.
Most of the appeals sent to the state Supreme Court are assigned to the Court of Civil Appeals, with judges located in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. That court has 12 judges.
Appeals submitted to the Supreme Court system can include divorces, child-custody cases, malpractice lawsuits and legal challenges to state law among other items. In addition to district court appeals, the Supreme Court also reviews workers’ compensation cases, original actions and actions involving Oklahoma lawyers.
When looking at the number of appeals primarily from district courts, the decline is more dramatic. Since 1999, these appeals have declined 39 percent from 1,447 cases to 884 cases, records show.
The state Supreme Court shows a 49 percent decline in its review of workers’ compensation cases submitted to the Supreme Court system since 1999.
Winchester said the decline in workers’ compensation cases and general appeals could be caused by the focus on mediation and because of legislative reforms. Additionally, the rising cost of trying civil cases has also contributed to declining cases at the district court level and subsequently fewer appeals at the state Supreme Court.
“The Legislature, in the past few years, has tried to streamline civil cases and workers’ comp cases,” Winchester said. “I believe that lawyers are also evaluating the overall costs of filing a case. I believe the result is better-quality cases when they are filed.”
Information from: Tulsa World, www.tulsaworld.com
Topics Workers' Compensation Oklahoma
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