Back in January, I wrote about the efforts of the courts in NJ to give the public access to court filings via the internet (with a few exceptions). You can read the details here. Functionally, this information is already available at the courthouse to anyone who wants to go down and see it. Obviously, putting it on the internet makes it far more accessible — to anyone with an internet connection.
On May 28, 2008, the NJ Supreme Court held hearings on these proposed rule changes. You can view part one of the hearings here and part two here (they are about 40 minutes long each). The testimony given matches some of the written comments submitted to the court. You can read all of them here. They are a mixed bag, as one would expect. Most of the concern is about what should be eligible for internet access and what should be redacted. Lawyers are concerned about the amount of work that will need to be done for (proper) redaction. I also wrote about when the redaction is not done correctly and the problems that can create, here.
Spokeswoman Winnie Comfort said that the Supreme Court will decide whether the new rule will be implemented at its discretion. Given that one of the high court’s justices led the committee studying these rules changes, I would suspect it will pass in some form.
Mediation is a confidential process that can keep your business out of the courts (if you read most complaints and answers, you will rarely get a good impression of a defendant even though the truth may be far different). To learn more about mediation, please visit the rest of this site or feel free to contact me.