Clerk of Courts office has online system

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

A computer and software upgrade completed in late 2010 has now resulted in an online case information system for the Van Wert County Clerk of Courts office.

Clerk of Courts Cindy Mollenkopf noted that the online system, provided through court software company Courtview, will show the status of the various court cases filed through Common Pleas Court, which includes approximately 800 cases filed last year. Among those were 160-170 domestic relations cases (divorces, dissolutions, etc.), approximately the same number of criminal cases and between 350 and 400 foreclosures.

Mollenkopf said the foreclosure number is actually good news, since foreclosures, which were up drastically during the economic downturn that began in 2008, have decreased significantly over the past year from a high of approximately 600 in 2010.

The clerk of courts said the new online case status system would be especially welcome to out-of-town attorneys, who typically had to call into the local clerk’s office to find out whether a particular case had been filed. Now, that can be done online.

“We’ll probably get ride of 80 percent of our phone calls,” Mollenkopf said, noting that most of the office’s calls had to do with case status inquiries.

The online system came about as a result of a computer and software upgrade that took place in November 2010. At that time, several new computers were purchased and a software upgrade from the DOS operating system to Windows was implemented. Currently, the clerk of courts office has computers operating on Windows XP and Windows 7, both of which are supported by Courtview software.

“We wanted to be on the new system for about a year before we went to an online system,” Mollenkopf said, noting that her staff underwent training

The new system basically replicates the in-office court case information system on a separate server, the clerk of courts said, noting that replication prevents people from “hacking” into the original court information.

The information, which includes records going back to May 1, 1998, shows the status of cases and any court fees owed. It doesn’t include social security numbers of birth dates, Mollenkopf said, noting that information is redacted before it’s placed on line.

Mollenkopf said the latest upgrade to an online case status system was not all that expensive, but noted the next system upgrade — to having actual images of court documents online — would likely cost $50,000 to $100,000, with the purchase of scanners and other software needed for that upgrade.

Currently, a $10 fee is levied on each case to pay for technology upgrades, although Mollenkopf said it’s harder to get payment of that fee on criminal cases, where defendants are typically indigent.

“The probation department helps, though, because they often won’t take someone off probation until all court fees are paid,” she added.

The $10 fee would have resulted in revenues of approximately $7,500 last year, if all fees were paid — a long way from the $50,000-$100,000 needed for the hardware and software costs of an imaging system.

However, that upgrade could come sooner than planned because of an initiative promoting electronic filing by attorneys.

“The electronic filing initiative could actually force us to implement an imaging system,” Mollenkopf noted, but said she isn’t sure at this point where the funding would come from to pay for such an upgrade.

Meanwhile, attorneys, especially those out of town, won’t be calling her office to check the status of cases anymore, something that should make the clerk of courts office more efficient in the future.

“It saves a lot of time for us,” Mollenkopf said of the online system.