Washington courts forced offline. Here’s how it affects people in Tri-Cities

Benton and Franklin county court officials scrambled this week after Washington’s court computer system was forced to shut down over the weekend.

Clerks’ offices told people to bring cash or cashier’s checks if they needed to make a payment. And they hope it will be restored by Nov. 12.

The state system serves as a backbone for every court system in the state, from municipal courts to the Supreme Court. It also stores court cases and lets attorneys look up people’s criminal histories.

“So that greatly impacts our ability as a court to ... work smoothly,” Benton-Franklin Superior Court Presiding Judge Jackie Stam said during a hastily-called meeting Tuesday. “We can work. It’s just how smooth it’s going to be.”

Problems started Sunday when the Administrative Office of the Courts detected “unauthorized activity” in the system and shut it down.

It still remains unclear what the “unauthorized activity” was or whether it was the result of a cyber attack.

The state courts office has told the county courts the system would be offline for about a week.

While the outage created headaches for attorneys, judges, administrators and the public, most of the services people expect from the court system were still operating.

The clerks offices took passport applications, accepted paperwork for cases and processed criminal cases, protection orders and mental health holds, Benton County Clerk Josie Delvin and Franklin County Clerk Mike Killian told the Herald.

Both counties still could access to their documents, even if they needed to search for them differently.

The clerks’ offices and courts also functioned on their normal schedule.

However, people looking to find out if their case is scheduled in a court for this week may struggle. The Benton County docket, which lists what cases are going to be heard, usually is processed the week before, so the schedule is public for this week but not next week.

Court clerks are compiling those lists and, in Benton County, people will need to go into the Justice Center in Kennewick to see the list.

Parenting plans for divorce proceedings also were delayed because they weren’t able to do the required background checks, Stam said.

Cleaning up after the shutdown will likely take a while, since they need to handle the backlog while new ones are added.

This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 4:07 PM.