CALDWELL — A computer crash has erased nearly 50,000 local 3rd District Court case files, threatening to disrupt legal proceedings in southwestern Idaho.

Court clerks are scrambling to continue business as usual, but vital information cannot be accessed from many computer files used by administrators, judges and the public.

Third District Court Administrator Dan Kessler said staff members arrived Tuesday to learn the court´s computer server dumped thousands of new court case files and countless updates to older cases.

The entire 3rd District Court case log has been affected, including all civil, criminal, traffic and family court cases. He said he has no idea how long it will take to manually update the system.

“It´s more than a mere glitch,” Kessler said. “We lost all of our database from March 5, 2002, to Feb. 14, 2003.”

Clerks are working with judges and attorneys to ensure daily calendars are complete.

Kessler said judges may be lenient if people make honest mistakes, but he warned criminal suspects against trying to take advantage of the situation.

“That ain´t gonna work,” he said.

John Peay, information systems chief for the Idaho Supreme Court, said his office is to blame for an operator error when a technician was expanding the 3rd District court computer to improve response time for operators.

As a result, both copies of the records were lost.

“I´ve been in the business since 1981 and I´ve never seen anything like it,” Peay said. “We´ve already checked the state´s other court computers and this has not happened anywhere else.”

Judicial officials have put together a recovery plan. The hard drive was sent to California, where specialists may be able to recover some of the lost data.

If no cases are saved and thousands must be manually re-entered into the computer, Peay has contacted court clerks across Idaho about helping local employees work overtime to refile the cases.

Idaho Statesman

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2003