Court filings in Circuit, Chancery and Probate courts were down for the second quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago and the first quarter of 2011, according to The Daily News Online, www.memphisdailynews.com.

The counts come as two civil courts prepare to change the way cases are filed and accessed.

The 1,819 Circuit Court filings were down slightly – about 1 percent – between April and June compared to the 1,838 filings in the first quarter of the year but down 28.6 percent from the 2,549 filings in Q2 2010.

Circuit Court’s top filings were divorces (542, which includes regular divorces and divorces with children), auto accident claims (327) and hospital liens (286).

The number of hospital liens was a big drop – nearly 70 percent – from when they spiked in Q2 2010 at 949 filings in Circuit Court. That was months after a January 2010 Tennessee Court of Appeals ruling limiting how much of an insurance settlement hospitals can claim from patients who don’t or can’t pay the full bill for medical services.

The number of liens filed had been up dramatically during the two-year period going into the quarter a year ago.

Chancery Court saw 537 filings between April and June, down 11.4 percent from the 606 filings in Q2 2010 and down 5.8 percent from the 570 in Q1.

Of the second quarter’s Chancery filings, most were divorces or divorces with children (combined 170) followed by adoptions and breach of contract claims (54 each) and workers’ compensation claims (35).

The 265 Probate Court filings for the quarter were down about 12 percent from the 301 filings between April and June 2010 and down 18.7 percent from the 326 filings in Q1. Probate filings were dominated by wills, as is usually the case. This quarter, the 135 wills made up just more than half of the total Probate filings.

Meanwhile, attorney practicing in Chancery and Circuit Courts are a step closer to an electronic case filing system that will make court documents viewable and printable on the websites for both courts.

The two civil courts have been pursuing document scanning for years, even before the current efforts to voluntarily consolidate the computer systems of the various court clerks under a single Shelby County Information Technology department.

The Shelby County Commission in June approved a $427,350 contract with ACS Government Systems Inc. for the e-filing system for the two courts.

Chancery Court Clerk Dewun Settle and Circuit Court Clerk’s office chief administrative officer Van Sturdivant hope to have the system up and running next April.

The public can now see a listing of a case’s events on websites for both courts, but the listing does not include the documents and the computerized case files sometimes go days and weeks without being updated. An attorney or other citizen wanting to see the documents must go to either clerk’s office and have a clerk physically find and bring the file to an office counter.

The criminal and civil divisions of General Sessions Court and Shelby County Criminal Court have websites that offer the same information in a different format but also lack the ability to see court documents.

The filing systems contrast sharply with the court document scanning and filing system used by federal courts across the country. There, a PACER account – which stands for Public Access to Court Electronic Records – allows citizens to see and print court documents. The original court documents are scanned into the system and are usually available on PACER the same day.

The Chancery and Circuit Courts’ e-filing system will work in a similar way – with a few differences.

“PACER was created through the federal government using taxpayer dollars through the U.S. Congress. We’re purchasing an off-the-shelf system,” Settle told county commissioners, adding it will not be mandatory as it is in the federal court system.

“Initially we’re going to try to get people on board. We’re not going to force it on people,” he said. “We’re going to try to get people to voluntarily do it. But over time we hope that it’s going to be mandatory in the next couple of years from the Tennessee Supreme Court.”

“Our office is really only responsible for the standards for the courts to implement e-filing,” said Laura Click, spokesperson for the Administrative Office of Courts in Nashville, which includes the Tennessee Supreme Court. “Our office is about finished finalizing those.”

Settle said he pushed for a subscription fee that would pay for the system, which raises questions about access to the records by all citizens.

“I tried to get a subscription rate that was fairly substantial to kind of meet the county’s output – to pay for the system as quickly as possible,” he said in response to questions from county commissioner Walter Bailey, who is an attorney. “But the Supreme Court very quickly told me that they were not going to allow us to have a subscription rate that was of any significance. I was in favor of passing the cost on to my brother attorneys.”

Settle said the subscription rate will be “minimal,” well below the $40 he initially wanted to charge.