152nd District Court Judge ( Photo Robert Schaffer)

The administrative judge of courts in hurricane-ravaged Houston has a message for lawyers practicing in Harris County.

“We are back up and running,” said 152^nd Civil District Judge Bob Schaffer. “We are doing the best we can to get this system where it was before the storm. It's going to take a while, but that's our goal.”

That goal is easier said than done, considering the substantial damage that Hurricane Harvey and subsequent flooding did to court facilities. There haven't been any jury trials—and won't be until late October—because storm water completely damaged the county's jury assembly building, preventing judges from calling jury panels. All of the criminal county and district judges had to move out of the criminal justice center and begin sharing courtrooms with civil district judges in the county's unharmed civil courthouse.

Texas Lawyer spoke with Schaffer to get more details about the damage, impact on court operations and plans for recovery. Here are his answers, edited for brevity and clarity.

What was the damage to the Harris County Criminal Courthouse?
There was water damage—floodwater. External sewers backed up into the building and some pipes burst inside the building.

How has it impacted the criminal courts' work? They can't work there at all?
No—the criminal justice center is closed. The 39 judges who work there had to relocate their offices. The 16 county criminal court-at-law courts were moved to the old Family Law Center, and they are functioning there. The 22 criminal district courts and one reintegration court were moved for the most part to the civil courthouse. For the most part they've moved into suites where judges have doubled up. A listing of where each court is now located is on the district clerk's website.

What repairs are needed and how long will they take?
I believe the county plans to renovate and repair the criminal justice center. It's expected the repairs will take nine to 12 months. Some planning has to go into it. Requests for qualifications have to be sent out. Proposals have to be sent out. This is government work, so I believe they probably have to put it out for bids. That takes time, unfortunately. The full scope of what they are going to do hasn't been determined. If all they do is try to get the building back to its original conditions, making some accommodations for some of the things they know they can fix to keep this from happening again, then it will take closer to nine months. If they have to make more accommodations or more changes to the building, because they decide to try to make it a better building, then it will take longer.

What is the damage to the jury assembly building?
The jury assembly building was destroyed. It was water up to 11 feet. They are still ripping out stuff inside that building: There are dumpsters, there are heavy duty dryers. It's a real mess. It's underground—that probably contributed to its condition. It's in bad shape and they have to decide what they are going to do with it. The county has to decide if they want to clean it up and rebuild it or maybe go in a different direction: Build it above ground on the same site, or go somewhere else.

Has this stopped the county from forming jury panels for trials?
Jury calls were canceled through Oct. 3 because we had nowhere to call them to. We haven't had a physical space for them to go to and send them out on jury panels. We're still working on that. We're trying to set up space in the county administration building now for a smaller jury call beginning on Oct. 16 and we expect the jury call to increase at some point in time after that. In order to relieve the pressure on the system, the civil district courts, the probate courts and the family law courts all agreed not to call any cases for jury trials through the end of October. The criminal courts will get the first shot at juries on Oct. 16, and then I believe the first week of November it will open for all the courts to make requests for juries. It will be a smaller call, so the available jury panels will not be there for every court who wants to try a jury trial.

Speaking of cases, how long will it take to catch up from the backlog?
It's a temporary thing and I know for the people involved, it's difficult. There will be some backlog, but the cases that don't get rescheduled right now will be disbursed over dockets in the future. I really don't expect it to take that long to catch up. What we've got to have is a place for people who are summoned for jury duty to come to, and we've got to get the numbers up to where they were before the storm hit and did the damage it did. Right now, I can't speculate on how long it will take to get up to full speed.