State high court releases 20th annual report on Nevada judiciary

The Nevada judiciary processed tens of thousands of cases in fiscal 2019, making a significant dent in a pending backlog of cases.

This achievement — and other work of the courts this year — was highlighted in the 20th annual Nevada judiciary report released Thursday by the state Supreme Court.

“With this report, the Nevada Judiciary shows it continues to make progress in the pending backlog even as cases become more complex and challenging,” state Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Gibbons said in a statement. “This is a historic year for the Nevada Judiciary with a female majority in the Supreme Court for the first time in history, a record number of cases, and 20 years of providing comprehensive statistics of our workload.”

Fiscal 2019 ran from July 1, 2018, to June 30.

According to the report, since the state Court of Appeals was created in 2015, it has been assigned roughly 4,000 cases. By the end of 2018, the Court of Appeals had resolved about 3,600 of those cases.

The report covers Nevada’s 11 judicial districts, which span 17 counties. The state’s judiciary is made up of 17 district courts, 40 justice courts and 17 municipal courts.

The full report can be found online at www.nvcourts.link/2019-Annual-Report, but here are some highlights from the report — by the numbers:

Statewide vs. the Eighth Judicial District

Nevada’s judiciary received more than 854,000 cases, including 391,469 non-traffic cases and 463,383 traffic and parking cases in trial courts.

Meanwhile, 102,780 cases reached the trial court level this year in Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District. Of those cases, 98 percent had been resolved at the time the report was completed.

The Eighth Judicial District covers all of Clark County and its unincorporated towns, including Bunkerville, Goodsprings, Laughlin, Moapa and Searchlight.

The district has a population of about 2.2 million and covers roughly 7,890 square miles, according to the report.

Appellate courts

This year, 2,982 cases were filed in Nevada’s appellate courts. In that same timeframe, the appellate courts handed down 3,153 decisions.

The state Supreme Court resolved 1,852 cases, while the Court of Appeals resolved 1,301 cases.

Contact Rio Lacanlale at rlacanlale@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Follow @riolacanlale on Twitter.