Thanks to Senior Judges Blackburn, McMurray and Pope the Court was able to keep abreast of its caseload during the last few months despite the retirement of Judge Blackburn and death of Judge Debra Bernes.

HB1055 passed the 2010 General Assembly increasing the per page rate of preparation of the appellate court by the trial court clerk from $1.50 to $10.00 per page. The Supreme Court responded by amending its rules to permit the parties to submit a Record Appendix in lieu of the trial court clerk preparing the whole record. The Court of Appeals adopted this process. The Clerk's office of the Court of Appeals is receiving on average about 20 inquiries per day concerning the Record Appendix and has to handle a number of issues related to submissions that do not conform to the Rule or our guidelines. This has burdened our staff which is already dealing with furloughs and a reduction in about 25% in personnel since FY2009. The Court supports a rollback of the per page rate and a return to the Clerk of the trial court preparing the whole record. In the alternative, the Record Appendix should be filed with the trial court and transmitted with the Notice of Appeal to the appellate Court. Also, the Court believe that in the long run, the appellate courts, trial courts and legislature should develop a long-range plan for the electronic transmission of the record from the trial courts to the appellate courts.

The E-filing is continuing to move along. Over 1800 attorney filings have been made through the Court's e-filing system since January 2010. The Court is now averaging about 45 orders a month issued electronically in response to motions or requests to argue that were electronically filed. The electronic filing is restricted by the age of the Court's case management or docket system. Therefore, the Court has begun a project to design and develop a new case management system with our vendor, Trivir. Once the new case management system is completed, we will be able to expand the e-filing system to all types of filings.

New Judges - Judges Keith R. Blackwell and Stephen Louis A. Dillard sworn in as judges of the Court on November 2, 2010 filling the positions of Judge Blackburn who retired and Judge Bernes who passed away last summer. In the recent November election, Christopher McFadden was elected to take the position of Judge Edward Johnson who is retiring at the end of the year.