After ransomware attack, LA Superior Court is nowhere near back to business as usual

Although the Los Angeles County Superior Court was open again on Tuesday following a ransomware attack, very little was functional, according to attorneys and court staff.

An attorney based in Sherman Oaks said her colleague went to the Stanley Mosk courthouse in downtown Los Angeles for a hearing only to learn that the judge was not there. She disputed the court's claim that case initiating documents could be electronically filed. She asked that she not be identified.

"We are now printing pleadings that we uploaded to the court's website that were not processed and filed because the system shut down, or that we cannot e-file because they had to be filed on July 19 and July 22 - so that will take the rest of the day - then messengering them to the court to manually file and take courtesy hard copies to the department," she said.

"I hope that works [but] I have no idea because there's no guidance at all and the system is still down," she continued.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court reopened at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, one day after all 36 courthouses were forced to close due to a ransomware attack. However, most of the electronic services that entered common use during the pandemic remained offline. Some internal telephone lines were still offline Tuesday afternoon.

A statement posted on the court's website said several functions, like remote appearances, were not available.

How to proceed on Tuesday was left to the discretion of the judges, but nearly all the cases on calendar were being continued, an employee said.

Judge Stuart M. Rice at the Spring Street Courthouse heard a few matters, according to court staff. However, the court's remote appearance system was down, so attorneys had to appear in person, and Rice was unable to access the case management system.

Judge Jon R. Takasugi at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse heard matters in the morning and continued those that did not have full appearances, staff said.

Judge Thomas D. Long at Stanley Mosk continued all his hearings on calendar. However, he tried to proceed with a bench trial that began prior to the ransomware attack, even though the case management system was not accessible.

"The case calendar is up on the web," the defendant's attorney said as the court stenographer was setting up.

"Until you click on the document," Long replied.

"I got the document," the attorney said a few minutes later.

"It's on his phone," the courtroom clerk said, as Long attempted to log in.

The court has said very little publicly about the ransomware attack that forced the nation's largest trial court system to close. A statement from the court said that a ransomware attack began Friday morning, which coincided with the global CrowdStrike outage. However, a court employee said on Tuesday that the court's system went down on Thursday.

"We got hacked," another employee said. "They wouldn't tell us any more than that. We're just worker ants."

Restraining orders were being accepted and processed manually, but review was taking a bit longer, according to a clerk in that department at Stanley Mosk.

A statement from the court's communications office Tuesday afternoon said they will not comment on the details or status of the ransomware investigation.

"Over the past four days, the court has distributed several news releases, public notices and social media posts to keep court users and the legal community apprised of the court's recovery process from the July 19 ransomware attack," the statement said. "This situation remains fluid, and we ask for court users' patience as we continue to restore systems and networks that have severely hampered the court's ability to conduct business."

The chaos created by Friday's attack is likely to compound existing issues faced by the court. Unlimited civil caseloads in Los Angeles have nearly doubled over the last decade. Judges were juggling an average of 847 cases as of December 2023.