Washington state courts’ online system was still down as of Friday afternoon as Washington’s Administrative Office of the Courts continues working to “safely restore service” following the detection of “unauthorized activity” on the electronic network.
All Washington courts, including those in Lewis County, have been unable to access any online calendars or case records since the issue was discovered on Sunday, Nov. 3.
Lewis County courts have been unable to accept e-filing since Nov. 4 due to the outage, but previously scheduled hearings for the week have gone largely unimpeded.
“Fortunately, we prepare our calendars a week ahead of time, so we were aware of what was on our dockets for this week,” Lewis County Superior Court Administrator Susie Palmateer said. “... Unfortunately, without any indication from Administrative Office of the Courts as to when the system might (be) accessible to the courts and court users, we will be facing a very challenging week next week not having calendars prepared or documents available to prepare for upcoming hearings.”
The Administrative Office of the Courts shut down the online case management system, called Odyssey, as well as the Judicial Information System, Washington Courts website and affiliate websites out of “an abundance of caution” and is “working around the clock with leading experts to restore services as quickly as possible,” Associate Director Wendy Ferrell told the Seattle Times on Monday.
“Service interruptions are anticipated to continue throughout the week, as the Administrative Office of the Courts continues to investigate the cause of unauthorized activity and restore services on the Washington Courts network,” Administrative Office of the Courts stated Thursday on its Facebook page. “Impacts to operations of local courts that rely on these systems vary by location, and we are working around the clock to restore services as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and will post updates as soon as they are available on this Facebook page.”
While some courts around the state, including King County’s superior and district courts, have their own independent case management systems and aren’t reliant on the state system, other smaller court systems, including many municipal, district and superior courts, have been significantly impacted by the shutdown.
The shutdown of the Odyssey case management system in particular has hampered Lewis County Superior Court operations.
“Once the system is back online, there will be a huge backlog of documents and cases to enter in the system after this period of not having access to Odyssey,” Palmateer said.
“Many cases are having to be continued to later dates, creating very heavy dockets in the near future, some cases are being delayed due to the inability to run necessary background checks.”
As of Friday afternoon, the Administrative Office of the Courts had not issued an estimate for when the online court system will be operational.
“We hope to be notified soon as to when the system will be back up and running and will post information on the superior court web page as soon as we have the information,” Palmateer said.
The website is accessible at https://lewiscountywa.gov/offices/superior-court/.
Updates can also be found on Administrative Office of the Courts’ Facebook page.
