The COVID-19 pandemic halted non-essential social and economic activities including the day-to-day operation of courthouses. During the shutdown, courts adopted special guidelines for providing essential legal services (e.g., bond hearings, temporary restraining orders). Some courts encouraged the use of electronic filings while others emphasized physical dropboxes. Lex Machina surveyed its current state civil trial court modules to examine how the pandemic shutdown impacted new case filings in state courts, which handle a tremendous volume and breadth of matters.

Our survey of new case filings in nine state courts during April and May 2020 revealed the following observations:

1. Case filings in state courts were significantly reduced during the shutdown. For the nine state courts that Lex Machina reviewed, total case filings in April 2020 were down 53% compared to April 2019, and filings in May 2020 were down 49% compared to May 2019.
2. Case filings for limited jurisdiction cases were more impacted than general/unlimited jurisdiction cases in the California and Texas courts that Lex Machina reviewed, suggesting that corporate litigation plaintiffs were less affected in pursuing litigation than individuals.
3. Courts that permitted only essential civil cases to be filed during the pandemic shutdown saw a surge in new filings after courthouses reopened in May. For example, Sacramento saw a 12% increase in General Jurisdiction cases filed in May 2020 when compared to May 2019, after seeing a 93% decrease in such cases in April 2020 when compared to April 2019.
4. Case filings during April and May 2020 increased for both Corporation and Commercial Law in the Delaware Court of Chancery (DCC) when compared year-over-year with 2019, which indicates that COVID-19 related cases are in fact driving an increase in overall litigation in DCC.

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