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As usual, these figures compare inflation-adjusted dollars.

It is interesting to see how the statistics change depending on where you start. In my last post, I wrote that filing fees have increased by 140% in the 26 year period. I thought this was a large change, when compared to other fee increases. But as you can see above, if I had looked at only a 21 year period, I would have been able to claim a 181% increase. Big difference!

(Sources: N.C. Session Laws; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The modern design of North Carolina’s Small Claims Court was codified in 1965. Under Chapter 7A of the General Statutes as it was then written, civil claims filed in District Court, where the amount in controversy was not greater than $500, could be assigned to a magistrate “in the interest of expediency.” These cases generally proceeded without attorneys, entailed lower filing fees, and resulted in judgments within 30 days of the filing of the claim.

There is a strong desire in this State for improved access to civil justice in our courts. A crucial part of that is the ease of filing a small claim.

An integral feature of a small claims court has traditionally been a relatively low jurisdictional limit. As of October 1, 2004, when the General Assembly last raised the limit, all claims in Small Claims Court must allege damages of $5000 or less, exclusive of interest and costs. In that year, the amount represented about 14% of the average annual salary in the State, or 39% of the 2004 poverty threshold.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals wrote, in its 1987 opinion in Duke Power v. Daniels, that the State’s Small Claims Court was created “to provide our citizens, corporate as well as individual, with an expedient, inexpensive, speedy forum in which they can process litigation involving small sums without obtaining a lawyer, if they choose to do so.” Central to the court’s definition, then, is the concept that the court was “inexpensive,” and the subject matter jurisdiction was limited to “small sums.”

With this focus on the limit, there has been some interest in how its adjustment affects the court. In William Haemmel’s 1973 study of North Carolina small claims courts, the author identified a raise in the jurisdictional limit as a possible way to increase access to justice:

Consideration should … be given to increasing the jurisdictional amount in small claims actions. At present, claims in excess of $300.00 may not be brought in small claims court. An increase in the jurisdictional amount would increase the number of claims which would be heard by the magistrate. Thus, the overall accessibility to the small claims court by the general public would be enhanced.

There are interests other than a concern for access to justice as well. In the bill that enacted NC’s last increase, the legislators identified the move as a way to “manage resources,” suggesting that it was motivated by a desire to broaden the reach of the magistrates.

On the other hand, filing fees have been given somewhat less notice. Although the Court of Appeals defined the small claims court as an “inexpensive” forum, until recently small claims filing fees were an afterthought, indistinguishable from most any other administrative fee. From all appearances in the General Statutes, fees were raised merely as a result of budget concerns. For example, Session Law 2000-109 (1999 Session) increased small claims filing fees. At the same time, it increased public utility regulatory fees, jail fees, and fees for digital access to agency services, among others.

There appears to be little evidence that the legislature has used fees as a way to control filings or move them from one court to the other—all fees, be they District Court, Small Claims Court, telephone fees, or otherwise—were raised at the same time.

This is in contrast with other jurisdictions, where fees have been more explicitly managed as a check on filing rates. This often arises from a perceived need to control “frivolous” lawsuits. The U.S. Supreme Court amended its rules in the early 1990s to give itself more discretion over in forma pauperis motions. Rule 39.8 of the Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States allowed the Court to deny a motion to file in forma pauperis if it determined that the filing was frivolous or malicious. In Zatko v. California, the Court applied the rule to two petitioners. Its per curiam opinion explained that the new rule was necessary to provide some control over the in forma pauperis docket. The Court claimed a need for more control “[b]ecause in forma pauperis petitioners lack the financial disincentives—filing fees and attorney’s fees—that help to deter other litigants from filing frivolous petitions….”

The second of the Court’s listed “financial disincentives” to file a claim, attorney’s fees, is generally and by design not present in a small claims court. This leaves filing fees as one of the few barriers to entry for those who do not qualify for in forma pauperis status. This factor is easily quantifiable for any period of time, so it presents itself as a viable target for quantitative inspection.

The NC Supreme Court issued an Order on November 3, 2005 establishing the Equal Access to Justice Commission. This was in response to a felt need for the State to “expand access to civil legal representation for people of low income and modest means in North Carolina.” The Order also identified a need to “[d]evelop and implement other initiatives designed to expand civil access to justice, such as increasing community education, enhancing technology, developing assisted pro se programs … [for] low-income people in North Carolina.”

As the Court’s Order reflects, there is a strong desire in this State for improved access to civil justice in our courts. A crucial part of that is the ease of filing a small claim. At that level, financial disincentives (read, fees) would seem to play a central role.

In her influential work on systems analysis, Donella Meadows posited, “To ask whether elements, interconnections, or purposes are most important in a system is to ask an unsystemic question. All are essential. … But the least obvious part of the system … is often the most crucial determinant of the system’s behavior.” In that spirit, I undertook to explore some of the most basic quantifiables of the small claims court system: filing fees and caseloads.

I first compiled a table of changes in filing fees using Session Laws, up to June 2010. To standardize the data, it was adjusted to July 2010 dollars, using the CPI South Urban All Items monthly figures. The following two graphs show how these fees have changed over time.

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Click for full size

One obvious trend is that, while adjusted fee amounts in District Court in 2010 were less than double the level they were at in 1984, adjusted fee amounts in Magistrate’s Court have almost tripled. In fact, in the twenty-six-year period reviewed, District Court fees increased 48% while Superior Court fees increased merely 21%. Magistrate’s Court fees, the fees that may make the most difference in whether a claim is filed or not, increased 140%. This is despite the legislature’s reducing Magistrate’s Court costs in 2008.

I wanted to explore the possibility that these changing economics of filing small claims have had some effect on filing rates. To do that, I took advantage of an issue-level breakdown of filing rates. In 1998, the Administrative Office of Courts began collecting data on the types of claims filed in Magistrate’s Court. Since then, the AOC has been generating monthly data that could show not just trends in total filings, but trends in specific types of filings as well. The AOC provided me data on the total number of filings for each month beginning in 1998, as well as the number of those filings that included a Summary Ejectment issue.

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This graph demonstrates an immediate benefit of breaking out the data. By doing so, we can see that while statewide non-Summary Ejectment filings per capita have declined in the time frame, Summary Ejectments per capita have actually changed little.

So fees have increased, and filings have decreased. This points to general trends, but it reveals little about the source of those trends. Using multivariate regression models, it may be possible to narrow the causes down, but such models applied to time series are notoriously fraught with hazards. Julian Faraway once observed, “The history of the study of the link between smoking and lung cancer shows that it takes a great deal of effort to progress beyond the observation of an association to strong evidence of causation. One can never be 100% sure.” Donella Meadows wrote, “[I]n trying to find statistical links that relate flows to each other, econometricians are searching for something that does not exist. There’s no reason to expect any flow to bear a stable relationship to any other flow.” An honest and plausible regression analysis is best left to the statistical experts to try and conjure.

Instead, I examined one possible cause visually, by culling the data for a kind of natural experiment. Many times, researchers can try to observe the effects in policy changes by finding a “control” population, and comparing the experimental population to that one. This can make it simpler to adjust for unknown variables such as economic changes and global shifts in perception and attitude. For example, if one wanted to look at whether more gun control laws reduced crime, one could compare crime data between states that enacted such laws and states that did not.

I took advantage of the AOC data set’s county-level breakdown of filings, and sought to compare counties of differing economic stations. To do so, I created two charts. Each chart shows the percentage change in per-capita civil filings from 2000-2009 for each court level. Percentages are shown for all 100 counties. In the lower chart, I’ve ordered the bars so that the leftmost bar represents the changes in the “richest” county (as measured by 2009 median income), and the rightmost bar represents the “poorest” county. In the upper chart, I ordered the bars by 2009 population. Owing to an almost certain covariance between population and income, the charts are quite similar.

Click for full size

Click for full size

Focusing on the Magistrate’s Court graph (labeled “CVM”) on the first chart, it doesn’t seem to show a clear pattern. Visually, then, we have no reason to believe that poorer, smaller counties have been decreasing their use of the small claims system in any different way than richer, more populous counties. The decrease is generally across the board.

These charts and graphs were designed to look at avenues for possible study, to ask more questions than they answer. And I think they do. Why did filings go down when the economy was improving? To what extent has the increase in fees been responsible for this? And how have the most recent fluctuations in filing fees affected filings, if at all? There are some rich avenues for exploration here.

Although the causes of fluctuations in small claims court filings in North Carolina are doubtless complex and nuanced, I hope these visualizations refine your understanding of the trends. A particularly interesting observation is the difference in the rate of increase of Small Claims Court fees versus other Court fees. The fact that Small Claims Court fees have risen so rapidly, by comparison, suggests that individuals with small claims are bearing increasingly greater shares of the financial costs of the state’s judicial system. At the same time, the numbers of monetary small claims filed each year are declining on a per capita basis. This is mainly the result of the legislature’s oversimplified fee increases: when Superior Court “phone systems” fees were raised by $1, Magistrate’s Court phone systems fees were raised by $1. This may be easier to draft, but it ignores the math. A dollar means more in a case involving $300 than in one involving $300,000. More importantly, a dollar means more to a person of low income and modest means.

The Equal Access to Justice Commission created several laudible goals when it was formed. Some are concrete but idealistic, such as the establishment of a right to counsel in civil cases. Others are not so much solutions as they are good civil hygiene (“Educate the public”). There is no mention of financial disincentives.

The true cost of filing a small claim had been decreasing since 2008, until the passage of the latest State appropriations bill. As of July 1, 2011, the cost of filing a small claim and having it served on a defendant is $126. In one day, Magistrate’s Court filing fees increased some 30%. (By comparison, the cost for a District Court claim is now $180.) And for the first time, a civil defendant asserting a counterclaim is charged as if he or she is filing a new suit, and any further filings that include a motion require an additional fee.

Much has been said already about the self-parody that is today’s shaving razor market. Criticism began in the 1970’s, in fact, shortly after Gillette introduced the first two-bladed “system,” the Trac II. One of Saturday Night Live’s oldest sketches was a fake commercial touting a triple-blade razor, which must have seemed ludicrous at the time (“The Triple-Trac. Because you’ll believe anything.”). It took over twenty years after that for Gillette to introduce the “Mach3.” Seven years later, we had five blades. (cf. The Onion, NSFW perhaps.) Coming full circle, it seems, Gillette also added a single blade on the opposite side of the razor that can be used alone. As Aldous Huxley said, “Technological progress has merely provided us with a more efficient means for going backwards.”

Less often parodied is the escalating costs of ownership in said systems. King Camp Gillette’s disposable razors of the mid-century man were a marvel of convenience and thrift compared to the time and effort required to prepare and use a straight razor. We still have the disposable razors, but the price increases show no sign of abating. It is the loss-leader (or “freebie”) marketing that has infected many of the tools of modern life: the razor is practically free!* The Swiffer is 50% off!* The iPhone is $49!*

*Includes one pack of disposable blades/cloths/apps.

Yet the march proceeds zealously forward to make sure you’re already outdated. A little too zealously, sometimes, for even the law. In 2004, Gillette introduced its “M3 Power” system, with three blades and a battery-powered motor that makes the whole thing vibrate. The company promised that the vibrations “raise hair up and away from the skin” so you shave closer with one “power stroke,” and even that the hairs change angles and extend. By December 2004, four of ten razors sold in the U.S. Were M3 Powers.

The only problem was, it wasn’t true. There wasn’t any good evidence that the M3 Power did what Gillette said it did. At least, that is the conclusion U.S. District Court Judge Janet C. Hall arrived at in 2005. In her decision, Judge Hall found that some of Gillette’s claims were “literally false,” and others, while unclear as to falsity, were doubtful. As a result, the Court granted a preliminary injunction and barred Gillette from continuing to make certain claims in its advertising.

Yes, yes, you may be saying, that’s all well and good. Razor blades are expensive, they rely on an unsavory business model, etc etc. But what choice does one have? If a guy hates electric razors, and wants a quick, easy shave in the morning, he can reach for a multi-bladed contraption and be done with it. It’s progress. It’s efficiency, it’s quality of life. It’s worth a little extra. You’d have to be a Luddite to disagree.

But you do have a choice. The idea that you have to accept the latest advances no matter how costly, or be left behind, is a delusion of the worst kind. It’s an intentional delusion. You do have a choice, but it just doesn’t happen to be the popular choice. A couple of years ago I purchased a Gillette razor that I love, and I highly recommend it. The replacement blades are wildly inexpensive, it has a nice heft in the hand, it’s more comfortable and effective than any electric I’ve used, and just as comfortable and effective as a five blade razor. And it was made in 1964.

The great economist and liberal John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue as to why the U.S. Is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.” I doubt he was talking about razor blades, or phones, or “tablets,” but he might as well have been. I don’t want to frame this as a class war-we’re all to blame for the obsession with trees, at the expense of the forest. From the Gillette ad man down to the Angry Birds evangelist. We can all talk endlessly about what’s wrong with culture, what’s wrong with politics, what’s wrong with society. And then we go “just looking” in the store aisles with half-open mouths. As someone smarter than me once said, you can’t imagine a better world if all you’re thinking about is iPods.

I propose that it should no longer be shameful to be called a “Luddite.” We shouldn’t be proud, nor ashamed, to question where we direct our psychic energy. I don’t deny the inevitable: as film is replaced by digital cameras, as books are replaced by e-readers, so the physical is replaced by the conceptual. We already live in a world where, if you want to read the very latest government commission report, or hear the latest Kanye West GOODFridays cut, you have to log in. And for the most part, I think that’s a great thing. But I also believe that it is all too easy to get caught up in hype and hyperbole, and forget that alternatives might exist. In our daily cost-benefit analysis of life, the third dimension often gets left out, either mistakenly or intentionally.

“Is there another option?”

Resources on safety razors, both vintage and modern:

The Wet Shaving FAQ - everything you need to know about safety razors and their use.

RetroRazor Shaving Store – “A greener, cheaper, closer way to shave … and with moxy!”

Learn How to Shave Like Your Grandpa – from The Art of Manliness. “You’ll feel like a bad ass!”

Crabtree & Evelyn Nomad Shaving Cream – My recommendation, if you like to use a brush. My last jar lasted 14 months.

1. The Practical Cogitator: The Thinker’s Anthology

2. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

3. Say It with Figures, 6th ed. (“A New Edition of the Classic Work in the Field of Social Sciences”)

4. Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

5. Studs Terkel, The Great Divide: Second Thoughts on the American Dream

6. Richard Ford, The Sportswriter

7. Einstein’s Moon: Bell’s Theorem and the Curious Quest for Quantum Reality

8. The Grown-Up’s Guide to Running Away

9. H.R. Hays, From Ape to Angel (“Exploring the folkways, mores, totems, and taboos of primitive peoples past and present ….”)

10. Richard Russo, Empire Falls

11. The Plant Kingdom

12. The Sky Observer’s Guide: A Golden Handbook

13. Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

14. Story Earth: Native Voices on the Environment

15. Christopher Buckley, Boomsday

16. Charles Allen Edmondson, Seashore Treasures (1st Printing, 1949)

17. John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy

18. Teach Yourself Body Language (2d ed.)

19. Dana S. Lamb, Where the Pools Are Bright and Deep (1973)

20. In Bed With the Wrangler (Desire Series)

Can you tell I spent a lot of time in the nature and science section?

Poison, I thought. No good could come from reading them, or keeping them in the house even. I’m too old to take them seriously, yet too soft to read them sarcastically. After flipping through them one evening, without spending more than a moment on any in particular, I said a short goodbye and tossed the lot into the trash.

Then, this morning I was sweeping, and discovered that one letter had slipped by unnoticed. I began to carry it to the trash, but as I did, I couldn’t help but notice the words, “I LOVE YOU,” in all caps, bolded, and underlined. Who could possibly discard these words, without reading further?!

Before saying goodbye once again, I thought I’d share a few choice excerpts. I think it’s a lovely bit of nostalgia … it’s so full of that hungriness for human connection, in its youngest vintage.

(July 24) I LOVE YOU – and miss you like crazy. I thought an awful lot about you today. I was wearing your hat and listening to Fresh Prince (Ring My Bell) (Verbal Massage) as I sat at the back of the boat watching the sun set on the edge of the water – it was beautiful!

…

(July 26) Forgive my sloppy handwriting, for I am writing this on the bus as we head toward Paris. I am wearing your hat (and missing you like crazy.) I don’t know why but I love to sit at the back (which is where I am now), I think it’s because I can lay down and sleep. On the bus is a couple from Virginia, who might I add, constantly are falling asleep with arms all over each other. They look rather comfortable.

…

["George" and "Martha"] always sit in front of me on the bus and at this very moment he is passionately kissing the nape of her neck – soon their actual lips will meet – mark my words.

…

I see young couples walking hand in hand – kissing every two seconds – happy to be with each other – and this reminds me of us.

I’m pleased to share with you a little something I wrote, viewable via the link below.  Hope you enjoy it.

Holiday Party

One thought led to another, and I ended up jotting down some ideas for a walking tour app.  We’ll see where this goes … as always, comments are welcome.

Click mind map to explore

Mind map courtesy of the wonderfully fun and useful bubbl.us.

Don't be a bad dad.

What if I told you he had a two-year-old son? Would you say it’s still no harm, no foul?

Consider some of the ways that a dad who smokes might be a bad dad:

• A guy who smokes has been shown to miss more work days due to illnesses such as colds and the flu; for my friend the bad dad, this means fewer family vacation days, and more days spent saying, “I’d kiss you, but ….”
• A guy who smokes tends to age more quickly, and have a higher incidence of cancer; for my friend, this means a better chance that he will end up burdening his family, perhaps his adult son, with a life-threatening illness.
• A guy who smokes has a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and death; it’s hard to be a good dad (or granddad, or great-granddad) when you’re not around.
• A guy who smokes tends to suffer depression more often; depression can lead to social withdrawal, alcoholism, and a generally pretty lousy role model.
• A guy who smokes tends to have lower energy levels and sleeps worse; this of course translates directly to my friend’s inability to keep up with his son when the little dude wants to play one of those hour-long games of chase.

You get the picture.  My friend, who smokes, is a bad dad.  And he’s a bad dad because he smokes.

For most folks, that’s a pretty easy argument to accept.  And it might not surprise you to learn that this “friend” is a figment I made up just to demonstrate a point.

What might surprise you a little, though, is that I made up the smoking part too.  This post isn’t about smoking.  That would be boring.  Everybody knows smoking is bad. Yadda yadda.

No, I’d like you to go back to the top of the page, and every time you see the word “smokes,” mentally strike that out, and instead insert the words, “does not exercise.”  My premise may now be a little harder to accept for some of you.

But the truth is, every medical point I made wasn’t about smoking; it was about lack of exercise.  In fact, experts say that inactivity poses as great a health risk as smoking.  Think about that for a second, Dad.  If you are spending every evening nestled in your couch-divot, well you might as well pull out a Pall Mall and light up while you’re at it.  And your kid is suffering, Dad, menthol stick or not.  He’s (or she’s) suffering your illness, your irritability, your sleepiness, your basic downward slouch to bummery.

But that’s good news.  That’s the kind of bad-dadness that is easily fixed.  (Easy? you’re saying to yourself … yep, it can be.)  A good place to start might be your friend at work who plays tennis, or the walking path around your neighborhood park.  Maybe try Wii Fit, or the kiddie pool.  There are as many fun ways to get your heart pumping as there are people who do it.  Just (ugh) “do it.”  I challenge you, Dad, to move, just move, a little more every day.

You know you’re going to have to start doing it some day, Dad. So start doing it today.

Take care, Dad.

Sources: Wall Street Journal, Mayoclinic.com