Page 11 - Delaware Lawyer - Fall 2020

develop a process to address emergency custody or visitation motions.
The First 30 Days
The first challenge to continuing court operations in the pandemic was how to accommodate the public and receive filings when access to the court- houses was restricted. Family Court is not yet on an e-filing platform, and a large percentage of our litigants are self- represented. We quickly established an electronic mailbox to accept emergency filings from self-represented litigants and attorneys. On March 20, Family Court entered a standing order allow- ing for the use of unsworn declarations in lieu of verifications, sworn declara- tions, affidavits and notarized signatures otherwise required on pleadings. Es- sentially, we created an e-filing system in a matter of a week. Additionally, the Chief Justice’s Order No. 3 required each courthouse to provide a method
for attorneys and the public to file paper documents if electronic filing was not available to them. New Castle County’s shared courthouse already provided dropboxes for filing, but, with a little creativity, the Family Court buildings in Kent and Sussex Counties established dropboxes for filing at each entrance as well as resource tables at the entrances to each building where litigants could ob- tain forms frequently acquired from our self-help centers.
Although the Chief Justice’s Order closed all courthouses to the public, each court was required to “have sufficient judicial officers and staff to hear emer- gency and essential matters in person or remotely through video or telecon- ferencing,” and each court’s Presiding Judge was to identify those employees required to come to the courthouse to conduct operations, with the remainder working from home. While the court reduced staff to less than 25 percent
Senior Corporal Romi Dunning of the New Castle County Police Department speaks to Mark Hitch, who is the New Castle County Operations Manager for the Justice of the Peace Court.
physically in the building, working from home for staff presented another chal- lenge for those who did not have the technology to work remotely. The De- partment of Technology Information created a laptop loaner program, and in conjunction with the Judicial Informa- tion Center, many staff were set up with remote access.
While the emphasis for Family Court was on the emergency proceedings per- taining to domestic violence, child wel- fare and other child-centric hearings, non-emergency and routine telephonic arguments, hearings and videoconfer- ences could proceed at the discretion of each of the trial courts. Protocols were established to continue holding non- emergency hearings remotely, with fre- quent and regular communication with stakeholders and members of the Bar.
It is indeed an underestimate to say that processes, procedures and staffing issues were in active flux. I can recall early on issuing a memorandum on a Friday evening before leaving work (ad- dressing how the court would be staffed the following week), only to change that memo on Sunday evening after Gover- nor Carney announced an addendum to his emergency order. In addition to con- cern about how we were handling our cases, the court’s administration was concerned about the effects of constant change and stress on staff.
Employee Health and Safety
There are approximately 340 em- ployees of the Family Court. There were several scares with employees un- dergoing COVID testing, and we had employees test positive early on. With each revelation of a possible exposure or positive case, we would respond following the Division of Public Health (DPH) and Centers for Disease Con- trol and Prevention (CDC) protocols. Thankfully, the staff recovered but, for the court’s leadership, it was a stressful time, reading DPH’s report each day of
FALL 2020 DELAWARE LAWYER 9
BUD KEEGAN