NYC's Small Claims Courts About to Grind to a Halt

Somehow we have not talked about the disaster that is the reduction in hours of New York City’s small claims courts. (The shortened hours of criminal courts are their own disaster, but that’ll probably have to be undone, as it’s illegal to hold people longer than 24 hours without seeing a judge, and you know that’s going to happen regularly.) Night sessions at small claims now happen just once a week, on Thursdays. Also, it’s chaos down there. In this case, it’s all Albany of course, so you know that you should be suing Andrew Cuomo over this eventually. So the headline “Despite Cutbacks, Night Court’s Small Dramas Go On‎” is technically true, but actually, those dramas are barely going on: decisions now come a month after trial, court dates are pushing into a backlog and this is a bad use of our resources. One of the richest cities on earth and we can’t even agree to pay for vital services? Oh wait, I know! Let’s privatize the courts!