The Federal Judiciary just released its business report for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2014.
Where does the District of Hawaii, conceptually rendered above, stack up?
For civil cases, in terms of median time from filing to trial, D. Haw. has a median time interval of 15.5 months. The average median time from filing to trial for all district courts was 24.9 months. Hawaii placed third behind the Eastern District of Virginia’s blazing 12.5 months and the Southern District of Florida’s 14.6 months.
Hawaii had 667 civil cases in FY2014. That is nearly three times the District of Alaska, double the District of Idaho, 30% more than the District of Montana and almost as much as the Eastern District of Washington.
For the 649 civil cases terminated in FY2014, 81 were contract, 45 involved real property, 18 were maritime personal injury, 56 involved personal injury, 192 were civil rights actions, 26 were intellectual property and 28 were labor suits. 82 cases were commenced with involving the federal government, either as plaintiff or defendant. One odd phenomena of Hawaii is the relative dearth of social security litigation. In FY2014, only four social security cases were brought. The District of Idaho had 40.
Hawaii has a good chunk of cases brought by parties not represented by counsel. For non-prisoner cases, 20% of cases were brought by pro se litigants.
Nationwide, the Federal Judiciary reports:
This fiscal year, filings in the U.S. courts of appeals fell 3 percent to 54,988. Total filings in the U.S. district courts remained stable, rising less than 1 percent to 376,536 as civil case filings increased 4 percent to 295,310, but filings for criminal defendants dropped 11 percent to 81,226. Petitions filed in the U.S. bankruptcy courts decreased 13 percent to 963,739.