The June 2010 election in California may change the way restoration contractors do business in Riverside County. Presently there is a long backlog of civil cases because the courts are overrun with criminal cases. This forces restoration contractors to resort to arbitration to increase their chances of collecting past due sums in fewer than four years. To force a party into binding arbitration requires a written arbitration agreement between the parties, which is what we recommend for contractors performing projects in Riverside County. The glut of criminal cases is partly the result of a very aggressive trial strategy by the County's District Attorney, Rod Pacheco, who was voted out of office on June 8, 2010.

District Attorney Rod Pacheco

Starting January of 2011, Pacheco will be replaced by Judge Paul E. Zellerbach who is leaving the bench to take over the District Attorney's office after ten years of hearing criminal cases.

Admired by some and denounced by many within the legal profession, Rod Pacheco took over the District Attorney’s office in 2006 and began making sweeping changes with serious repercussions.

Pacheco embarked on a campaign which virtually eliminated plea bargaining in serious felony cases.  The legal system quickly became clogged with an unprecedented number of criminal trials.  But it was plaintiffs in the civil system who suffered the most from this hard-line policy.  At one point, the courts were forced to declare absolutely no civil cases would be set for trial.  Eventually, makeshift courtrooms were set up at a local school and civil trials recommenced.  Still, Plaintiffs were being told by their attorneys not to expect a trial date for two years at best, and possibly as many as four.

In response to Riverside County courts being overrun with litigants having no hope of recovering the amounts they were seeking to recover in the near future, we recommend that restoration contractors insert binding arbitration clauses in their contracts within Riverside County to prevent them from becoming lost in the hoard of waiting plaintiffs.  We do not generally recommend arbitration clauses due to the expense of arbitration and the inability appeal the decisions, but in Riverside County it is an effective way for restoration contractors to circumvent the civil trial process and get faster results.  If District Attorney-elect Zellerbach succeeds in shortening the trial calendar, it may be worthwhile to reconsider the disadvantages of arbitration.

If restoration contractors have been wary of filing a civil complaint in Riverside County, it will relieve them to know Judge Zellerbach has promised to restore fair access to the justice system to plaintiffs.  We hope he will be able to relieve the court’s backlog, allowing civil cases to proceed to trial more quickly.  This will shorten the time and expense of pursuing collection matters within Riverside County.