Over the past few weeks, we’ve been reviewing the originating jurisdiction for the California Supreme Court’s civil, criminal and death penalty dockets since 2000.  Today, we begin the final phase of our review: the years 2010-2015, beginning with the civil docket.

We began this process by reviewing the 2010 county population data for California.  That data reflects that Los Angeles County is 26.38% of the state’s population.  The next two most populous counties, San Diego and Orange, are well behind at 8.33% and 8.1%.

As we can see in Table 41, Los Angeles County has dominated the civil docket during the past six years.  In fact, the fraction of the docket arising from Los Angeles County is even somewhat higher than one would expect based solely on population.  Los Angeles produced 15 cases in 2011 and 2013, 13 in 2010, ten in 2014 and 11 in 2015, and nine in 2012.  In all, 39.67% of the civil docket arose from Los Angeles County.  Orange County was only slightly under its share of the population, producing 14 cases for 7.61% of the civil docket.  Another 14 civil cases were certified questions from the Ninth Circuit.  San Francisco, despite not being one of the ten most populous counties in the state, was once again an important source for the civil docket, accounting for eleven cases over the six years.  San Diego County, the second biggest county in the state in terms of population, accounted for ten cases, or 5.43% of the civil docket, as did Santa Clara, the state’s sixth biggest county.  Alameda and Sacramento counties, the seventh and eighth biggest counties in population respectively, were next, accounting for nine and eight cases.  Riverside and San Bernardino counties – fourth and fifth in population – produced four civil cases, as did the Workers Compensation Appeals Board.  Contra Costa – the ninth most populous county – accounted for only two civil cases, as did San Joaquin, Marin, Monterey, Ventura and Stanislaus counties.  An additional eleven counties accounted for one civil case each.

Join us back here tomorrow as we turn our attention to the criminal docket between 2010 and 2015.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Nestor Ferraro (no changes).