Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts

heard in the Supreme Court. If there are nonmatrimonial
proceedings relating to child custody, support, or visitation, those
proceedings must be heard in Family Court. And if there are any
housing-related issues, those must be heard in a court with
jurisdiction over housing matters.
The economic analysis we have conducted (an analysis
that has been independently verified by the National Center for
State Courts (see Appendix iv)), addresses both of these
inefficiencies by quantifying (a) the amount of time that could
be saved per case, on a systemwide basis, if our recommended,
more flexible structure were in place and certain jurisdictional
barriers were eliminated; and (b), separately, the amount of time
that could be saved per case in the universe of cases where the
subject matter requires appearances to be made in more than one
court at the same time. Based upon the amount of time to be
saved, the analysis then calculates the monetary savings that
could be realized in a variety of ways, by a number of
constituencies. These include savings to:
• individuals who could avoid lost wages, travel costs and
attorneys’ fees by avoiding unnecessary trips to court;
• employers who would otherwise lose productivity when
their employees leave for unneeded court appearances;
• municipalities that must bear the cost of courtappointed
attorneys in criminal, Family Court and other
matters; and
• large and small businesses that could avoid unnecessary
attorneys’ fees.
“The consolidation of the
courts into a two-tiered structure
. . . would eliminate the
need for litigants to appeal to
multiple judges, speed the
resolution of disputes, reduce
costs associated with litigation,
insure greater consistency
and equity in judicial decisions,
and lead to an overall
improvement of case
management.”
– Citizens Union of the
City of New York,
January 2007
Our analysis concludes that such savings will amount to
$443 million annually, or more than $4.4 billion over the next
ten years. As noted in our analysis, our assumptions are
conservative, 71 and there are additional categories of economic
savings that we have not attempted to quantify. (For example, we
have not attempted to estimate the savings to witnesses
(including the reduction in overtime paid to police officers who
71
It should be noted that the number of cases at issue is so huge (3.7
million cases resolved per year) that even very conservative assumptions about the
availability of efficiency-based savings will produce a savings that is substantial
from the point of view of the state’s economy.
A Court System for the Future, February 2007 47