Superior Court Statistical Reporting Manual

1. CASES FILED

A filing is the initiation of a case in court by formal submission of a document alleging the facts of a matter and requesting relief. A separate filing is reported for the first petition filed (that is, for each case number assigned). Each unique dependency case number is reported as a single filing, no matter how many litigants or causes of action.

Incoming Transfers for Review - An incoming case that was previously adjudicated with an approved petition in another county, and is transferred to a subsequent county for ongoing review. A transferred case is like any other new filing except the case should be resolved upon filing with a "TRJU" (transfer of jurisdiction).

Cases Reopened - A reopened case is one which was previously completed but is reopened to supplement or change the original case resolution (e.g., vacating a judgment, remanding a decision to be re-adjudicated).

A reopened case is not counted as a new filing.

A reopened case is treated like any other case when scheduling or reporting a proceeding. All juvenile dependency proceeding-held codes are available for use and are counted in their appropriate categories (e.g., fact finding hearing, disposition hearing).

For a reopened case the resolution and completion codes and dates should be removed and the case should proceed as if it was never resolved or completed. (Example: When there is an order vacating judgment, change the resolution and completion codes and dates to blank to reflect that the case is no longer resolved and completed.) When all issues in the reopened case are resolved, enter the appropriate resolution code and date. When the reopened (and newly resolved) case reaches completion, enter the appropriate completion code and date.

This may create a very small increase in resolutions since a few cases could have two resolutions reported in different calendar years. The reprocessing of monthly SCOMIS statistics in January for the previous year will eliminate the duplications that may have occurred during the previous calendar year.

Cause Code Migration - Cause code migration is the changing of an initial cause-of-action code once a file is opened. Among juvenile dependency cases no cause code migration is allowed.