Tales from Kentucky Lawyers

1. Kentucky Courts, Past and Present

1 KENTUCKY COURTS, PAST AND PRESENT Many ofthe stories in this book illustrate how Kentucky's hardworking common people, the public personnel on all levels, and the occasional villains and rascals feel about peers, relatives, judges, and lawyers during periods of tension-filled social stress. Some lawyers and judges, in addition to sharing their favorite stories regarding courtroom confrontations , willingly expressed their personal views about changes in the legal profession over the years. While the following accounts are not like the stories in subsequent chapters, they will help readers better understand Kentucky's court system, as well as the viewpoints, feelings, and assessments of contemporary lawyers and judges. In addition, many.of the themes discussed here-caseloads, clashes between men and women, collegiality, fines and penalties, legal ethics, and the use of humor-appear repeatedly throughout the book One of the most significant changes commented upon has been the increase in court fees, regarded by many of those interviewed as a rather exorbitant burden and a source of additional stress on people called into court. 1. "IT's A lIARD TAX" The typical legal fee that lawyers charge for services rendered is affected by inflation. It has really gone up. When I started practicing law in 1971, there were 3,500 lawyers in the state of Kentucky. Now there are over 13,000 lawyers in the state. So from 1971 to 2001, the growth 10 Tales from Kentucky Lawyers is about 10,000 over this thirty-year period. The lawyers' fees, due to competition, should go down, but they haven't. They've gone up tremendously . We used to do divorces and a lot of things and got a fee of $150 to $200. Deeds and wills were $10 or $15. We all made a living, took vacations, and raised families on that. Nowadays, a will is $200 to $300, a divorce is $1,000 to $1,500, and fees have just gone up tremendously. It's the contemporary court costs that really get to me, because most of the people that come to my court-a district court-are working people, young people, or people on welfare, and while we can waive costs if these people are truly indigent, it's basically a really hard tax on them. We have to give them time to pay, but if they don't pay it, ultimately they'll be arrested and will go to jail for it. I try to be as liberal with them as I can, but not all judges do. It's a hard tax. The state legislature is what determines all of this, and they just keep tacking on five dollars here and ten dollars there. Some counties will impose costs for the fiscal court, while others won't. Some go halfway , while others go the maximum. You would have to do a survey every month to determine what the court costs are. So each county has its own lists. Stan Billingsley, Carrollton, March 20, 2001 2. "IT COSTS EVERYBODY Too MUCH MONEY" Court costs are now out of sight. I can't recall exactly, but it seems like when I first started practicing law, a filing fee was only $35 to file a case. Today, I don't really know what the filing fees are, but it seems to me that if we're talking about a civil suit, it costs $160 to $165. However, the biggest problem that I see with the court system now, and I really find a lot of problems with this, is that it costs everybody too much money to go to court. The state legislature is responsible for a lot of it, and all the special interest groups are responsible for it, like they add on five dollars for this cost and that cost. Well, the criminals ought to pay these costs. They're not all criminals, but they add a lot of costs on to traffic violators and other people. Now, they've come up with the idea that a person ought to pay for incarceration. Why, hell, if they could pay for their incarceration, they wouldn't be stealing to go to the pen anyway. How smart is that? That's stupid. I mean, what are you going to do? KENTUCKY COURTS, PAST AND PRESENT 11 You say, "Let the criminal pay for their own incarceration." How are they going to pay for it? Let's...