Jackson Jambalaya

You will soon be able to examine civil cases in Hinds County online. Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Bill Waller informed the Hinds County Board of Supervisors Monday the county is now ready to start using the electronic filing system established by the Mississippi Supreme Court for statewide use.

The system was rolled out two years ago in a pilot phase in Madison County. Other counties have adopted the system. The Mississippi Electronic Courts (MEC) project is based upon PACER, the electronic filing system used in federal courts. All documents are filed electronically. Users can examine civil cases online but criminal and divorce cases are not available for viewing online. The Chief Justice said the state bore all the costs of implementing the system for Hinds County. The only expense for the county will be the purchase of a scanner for approximately $10,000. Hinds County Chancery Clerk Eddie Jean Carr said the purchase would be paid out of excess funds returned to the county by the Chancery Clerk. The Chancery Clerk returned $178,000.

Here is the video of the Chief Justice addressing the board. He starts with a Jerry Clower joke.


Note: The federal system costs 10 cents per page to view. View or print, its ten cents per page. However, PACER places a cap of $3.20 per document. This comes in very handy if one has to look at exhibits or pleadings that are 50-100 pages. However, the costs in MEC is 20 cents per page. Understandable as the state does not have financial support for this as does the federal government. However, there is no cap on how much a document can cost.

Suppose you are reviewing a court file. If you are at the courthouse, you examine the file, determine what documents you need, then pay the copying charges to the clerk. In this system, you don't know which documents you need until you actually read them and that is where the pricing gets you. 100-page exhibit sitting there in the file? $20 just to read it only to find out you didn't need that document. In many cases its going to be much cheaper to go to the courthouse than use MEC to read a file. Several chancery clerks told me the clerks saw it as an opportunity to make a "killing" off of the system. The state should either implement a cap or make the documents read-only. If a reader wants to save or print a document, he can pay for it, just like he would at the courthouse. However, charging several hundred dollars just to view a file online (See the Taitz, McClinton, or Motorola cases. Those two cases alone will cost several hundred dollars to view) is unreasonable and smacks of price-gouging when compared to PACER.

The attorneys will see nothing wrong with this as their attitude is usually "stick it to the client". However, the court system is for all citizens of Mississippi, not just lawyers. The MEC system is a good project. Its definitely needed and is one of the few areas where Mississippi can be considered to be truly progressive. The state should be able to recover its investment and earn a profit. The system should be converted to read-only or a subscription should be charged for such a feature. MEC should be a system for all.