California IN BRIEF : SAN FRANCISCO : Bid to Add Superior Court Judges Denied

The Los Angeles County Bar Assn.’s attempt to require the state to approve more judges for the heavily backlogged Los Angeles courts has been rejected by a federal appeals court. Delays of several years in deciding civil suits before the county’s 238 Superior Court judges do not violate the constitutional rights of lawyers or their clients, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday. “We are acutely aware of the difficulties caused by court delays,” said the opinion by Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain. “Nonetheless, we cannot find in the Constitution any requirement that all civil actions must be completed within a prescribed time.” The suit, filed in 1987, was an effort to get federal courts to intervene in the slow pace of everyday civil suits in the state’s most populous county. A similar suit over Orange County judges is pending before U.S. District Judge David Kenyon of Los Angeles, whose ruling in the Los Angeles suit was upheld Friday.