Los Angeles County Errors
The filing court locator tool used on the Los Angeles county superior court website has many errors.
While I was drawing up the maps for name change court districts within California I came across some difficulties with Los Angeles county. It wasn’t a surprise that the most populated county in America had a complex system of court districts or that the boundaries were expansive. What was a surprise was the sheer amount of errors this system had.
On the Los Angeles Superior court website they have a handy tool for determining which court to file in for various cases. All a potential applicant needs to know is that name changes are under the “Unlimited Civil” case type in California. Using that information and their city/zip code they can find what court(s) they can file in. In the process of developing the court district maps for Transpapers I not only obtained the base excel file that the tool pulls it’s data from but also entered in every zip code within Los Angeles county to the “Filing Court Locator” tool to see if they matched. Many did not.
In all I encountered around 63 zip codes with errors out of a total of 298 or about 20% of Los Angeles county by area. Lets go through them by type:
Missing Zip Codes
There are 4 zip codes that are within LA county but are not listed on the filing locator tool. Three of these are located mostly outside of LA county but have small sections within (91709, 90630, and 90623). The 4th, 90090, is Dodger stadium which I learned is one of a select few building in the US that has it’s own zip code. Aside from Dodger stadium people still live in these sections of the city and the filing court locator tool just errors out when trying to enter their zip codes.
I have outlined the zip codes in red above, in addition Los Angeles county is shaded light blue to show that these are mostly right on the edge of the county. Thankfully the solution is simple enough, they just need to be added to the excel document. Their respective superior courts for name changes should be as follows: 91709 to Pomona, 90630/90623 to Norwalk, and 90090 to Stanley Mosk.
Missing Community Entry?
The 90710 zip code in the excel file only includes the city of Los Angeles and a nebulous “County Area” both of which state they are in the Long Beach superior court district. I am not sure if the stated “County Area” covers the area outside of the Los Angeles city borders in the below image:
The reason I am not certain is that this area is an unincorporated community called West Carson and the zip code directly above it (90502) does in fact call this community out specifically as the “Unincorporated Area West of Carson” and has a separate call out for another “County Area”. Due to this I believe that there should be a line in the 90710 zip code for West Carson specifically to match 90502 and I will adjust the map to that line if needed.
Wrong Court for Area
There are 4 zip codes which have at least one area that returns a wildly incorrect court for filing name changes. To show this I have displayed the superior court filing districts with white boundaries and the indicated area with a red border.
The first error is the city of South El Monte in the 91733 zip code which returns the Burbank/Glendale superior court district.
In the above image the Burbank/Glendale superior court district is in the top left corner. So people would need to cross two other districts and half the city just to get to the listed district which makes no sense. However given it’s proximity to the border of the Pomona superior court district and the Alhambra/Pasadena superior court district I am not sure which one the people of this city should go to. For now I lean towards the Pomona superior court district simply because the city of El Monte just to the north goes there.
The second error is in the 91316 zip code. Most of this zip code is covered by the Los Angeles neighborhood of Encino which gets it’s own separate line in the data. The rest of the zip code is covered by a generic Los Angeles line. The Encino line correctly returns the Van Nuys superior court district but the generic Los Angeles line incorrectly returns the Chatsworth superior court district to the north. Anyone from this zip code should file in the the Van Nuys superior court for name changes.
In the above image the Van Nuys superior court district is the blue area with the white border, the neighborhood of Encino is the blue region with the black border.
The third error is similar to the second error where the 90245 zip code is almost entirely covered by the city of El Segundo which correctly returns the Torrence/Inglewood superior court district. The rest of the zip code is covered by a generic Los Angeles line that returns the incorrect Santa Monica/Beverly Hills superior court district to the north. Anyone from this zip code should file in the Torrance superior court or the Inglewood superior court.
In the above image the city of EL Segundo has the black border, and the superior court districts have the white border.
The fourth and final error of this section has one of the communities listed in the 91350 zip code, located deep within the Chatsworth superior court district, going to the Lancaster superior court district. This community is Green Valley. The error comes from the fact that Green Valley does not have a 91350 zip code, it’s zip code is 91390. However even the 91390 zip code also returns the Chatsworth superior court district for every community within it so I am not sure which court the people of Green Valley should go to.
The above image shows that Green Valley is much closer to the drawn border. I will potentially redraw the border near Green Valley once this error is fixed and a court is correctly determined for it.
Unclear Boundary Definitions
Two of the boundary definitions leave ambiguous pockets due to the features (or lack thereof) that define the border.
The first boundary definition is in the 91423 zip code which divides the Van Nuys superior court district from the Burbank/Glendale superior court district. If you live in this zip code and live east of Fulton Avenue and Dixie Canyon Avenue then you are in the Burbank/Glendale superior court district. West of both avenues puts you in the Van Nuys superior court district. The only problem is that there is an area where both avenues overlap and people live between them:
This area where the two avenues overlap is between Moorpark Street and Valley Vista Boulevard. I am not sure which court district has jurisdiction over this area. When I drew my maps I had access to the official 2011 Los Angeles superior court district map data so I used the old 2011 border here which put this zone in the Van Nuys superior court district.
The second boundary definition is for the community of Hacienda Heights in the 91745 zip code. Its boundary definition simply states that the southernmost portion is in the Norwalk superior court district and the rest is in the Pomona superior court district. The issue here is that there is no definition of what constitutes the “southernmost portion” and no way for any potential applicant to figure out which court to go to.
When I was drawing the district lines for this area I used the old 2011 border again which does carve out a portion of Hacienda Heights as shown in the above image. Here you can see the border of Hacienda Heights in red and the old 2011 superior court district border in white. I was unable to find a common feature for why the border is drawn the way it is in this section. Due to this I am a little hesitant to say that this is the 100% correct boundary. I will update the map if a clearer definition is presented.
SQL Errors
The rest of the zip codes are all SQL errors from what I can tell. Specifically any zip codes that are even partially in the Burbank/Glendale superior court district or the Alhambra/Pasadena superior court district. The following zip codes all have at least one line with this error: 90063, 91001, 91006, 91007, 91008, 91010, 91016, 91020, 91024, 91030, 91040, 91042, 91046, 91101, 91103, 91104, 91105, 91106, 91107, 91108, 91201, 91202, 91203, 91204, 91205, 91206, 91207, 91208, 91210, 91214, 91342, 91352, 91423, 91501, 91502, 91504, 91505, 91506, 91601, 91602, 91604, 91605, 91606, 91607, 91608, 91754, 91755, 91775, 91776, 91780, 91801, and 91803.
The excel file correctly separates the two districts but the website always returns them as a combined block:
I have a hunch that it is due to an SQL statement trying to combine the Burbank/Glendale district and accidentally retrieving the Alhambra/Pasadena district instead. You see in the excel file as shown above the districts with two potential superior courts show both on a combined line but this is not true of Burbank and Glendale:
Both Burbank and Glendale are always listed separately in the excel file and are the only combined superior court area to do so. Either way I was able to use the excel document to correct the websites mistakes and draw the true border between the Burbank/Glendale district and the Alhambra/Pasadena district:
Conclusion
While the map I drew was as accurate as possible I am still left with some uncertainties given the quality of the source data. Furthermore the filing court locator tool itself has some serious issues that need to be resolved. The SQL errors alone cover an area with over half a million people and could very easily lead a potential applicant to try and file in an incorrect court only to be turned away. The other errors don’t effect nearly as many people but create so much ambiguity that even an experienced person like myself has a difficult time determining who should file where. What chance does a lay person with no familiarity of the court district system fare?
Thankfully there is one more rock solid solution that I can offer to those who are in the most ambiguous areas. The Stanley Mosk superior court in downtown Los Angeles will take a name change application from any resident of Los Angeles county so if you can’t figure out where to go you can always file there. They even have a process for E-filing so you don’t have to file in-person. I will also be formally submitting a complaint detailing the above errors in an effort to get the courts to fix the excel file and website generally. If they do I will update the district map accordingly and make a note at the end of this post.