100 Cases filed in the San Francisco Superior Court

I took a sample of 100 cases filed in the San Francisco Superior Court, to see its litigation dynamics. If another sample will be taken in a future, it will be interesting to compare, like I did with the scoop of 100 California appellate decisions, here. For now, here are my findings:



I looked at cases Nos. CGC-13-530000 through 530099. They were all filed within the span of March 26 through March 28, 2013, with the exception of one complex family of Product Liability cases, which all bear a filing date of February 28.

The sample only included the "CGC" cases (a.k.a. "General Civil"), so no criminal, family, asbestos, estate/probate, unlawful detainer, limited-case appeals, or juvenile cases got in, since they all have their own lettered labels and many are sealed, so I won't be able to see many of them anyway.

Out of those 100 general civil cases, 34 were inter-related to that one product liability complex litigation, so there the third of the scope went. The remaining 66 cases were of these kinds:

Collections, consisting mostly of credit card and consumer-debt collections, but not exclusively - 30

Personal Injury/Property Damage - Vehicle Related - 12

Personal Injury/Property Damage - Non Vehicle Related - 5

Contract / Warranty - 5*

Quiet Title / Real Estate - 3

Product Liability - 2**

Wrongful Eviction - 1

For Refund of Real Property Taxes - 1

Injunctive Relief and Statutory Penalties - 1

Mass Tort - 1

Toxic Tort / Environment - 1

Wrongful Discharge - 1

Civil Rights - 1

Defamation - 1

Fraud - 1

Violation of debt collection practices - 1

Subrogation / Insurance - 1

* Fraud complaint, separately mentioned, also had a breach of contract cause of action, so this case is mentioned twice.

** I put here two product liability cases, where one is the complex litigation, which took up 34 cases of my sample, and another was a different case.

Collections and personal injury cases lead the pack, then other torts, with contract and real property litigation being next, measuring to about a third of the P.I. caseload or to one sixth of collections.

Out of the 100 cases, some were entered on March 26 and some on March 28, giving me a chance to establish, exactly how many CGC complaints were entered in just one day. On March 27, 37 complaints were stamped as filed on that date, plus at least 17 more were assigned a case number on that day, for a total of 54 processed complaints.

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