AUBURN – Just a little more than $1 million would create a Maine business and consumers court, and Maine’s chief justice wants the state’s business community to get behind the effort.
Addressing a large audience at Thursday’s Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting, Chief Justice Leigh Saufley said, “We need to get back to having small claims cases and disclosure cases regularly scheduled.”
The plan, which is part of the Maine judiciary system’s current budget proposal, would reduce the expenses of up-front discovery and motion practice and get matters quickly to resolution.
“People are just not able to get the small business cases taken care of quickly,” Saufley said. “The longer the delay, the less your chances of collection, and a whole lot of accounts receivable have been hurt by the fact that we haven’t been able to do the small claims cases regularly.”
About five weeks ago, Saufley included funding for business and consumer courts among the proposals for Maine’s judicial system in her state of the judiciary address to the Maine Legislature. She told lawmakers, “The problems are real. They are hurting Maine people and businesses.”
Of the judicial branch’s total budget of $54 million, there is a $1 million request to create a business court, Saufley said. It would handle small claims and intermediate cases, and add four judges and support staff. Two of the judges would be for the new business court and the other two would be assigned to the Family Court Division.
Speaking about smaller business cases, Saufley said, “In Maine, I think these are the cases that have really been ignored for years.”
As an example, she cited business disputes that fall between $4,500 and about $30,000. If a business claims it’s owed about $19,000, a lawyer is likely to tell it that it could cost up to $22,000 to collect the money, Saufley said.
“That’s become a serious problem in delays and costs of litigation. What we really need to do is have a differentiation for cases that have reduced fiscal value but are very important to the parties,” she said.
Saufley explained that the necessary adoption of priorities for court cases puts emergency matters, family matters, criminal and other statutory matters ahead of business and civil cases. There are nearly 300,000 filings each year in Maine’s courts, she told the chamber audience, and she believes that the recent decrease in filing indicates that businesses feel they cannot receive priority scheduling given the press of family and violence-related cases that fill district courts.
Saufley urged business people to contact their legislators in support of the request. “Add your voice to those who are supporting the courts budget,” she said, “and offer us your ideas and expertise. This is a work in progress and we would like to hear from you about what might work and be helpful.”
Saufley’s remarks Thursday at Martindale Country Club also emphasized many other areas in which Maine’s judiciary is falling short. She said that the lack of staffing puts Maine in last place among the 50 states in its ability to get cases through the courts.
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