Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Page 3
High Court Announces Publisher for State Official Reports
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court said yesterday that a contract proposal by Matthew Bender & Company, a member of the LexisNexis Group, has been accepted by the contracting officials for the State of California and approved by the Supreme Court.
Matthew Bender & Company has been the publisher since 2003 under a prior contract. The new contract is for a five-year term that began with opinions filed on July 1.
Chief Justice Ronald George said the new contract “is noteworthy for providing unprecedented pricing stability for Official Reports subscribers, particularly state and local government entities that are affected by the state’s budget crisis,” adding that it “also provides for continued and improved public access to all California published opinions at no charge.”
The Official Reports are California’s authoritative body of appellate decisional law and include all opinions of the California Supreme Court, published opinions of the Courts of Appeal and superior court appellate divisions, and decisions of the Commission on Judicial Performance.
The new contract reduces subscription prices by approximately 1.5 percent for advance pamphlet subscriptions, and 2 percent for bound volumes, the Supreme Court said. It also freezes prices at those levels for two years, and then limits price increases to 5 percent for each of the next two years, assuming a specified economic index would otherwise allow a greater increase.
The new contract further provides for what the Supreme Court said are “significant enhancements” to the California courts’ website, which posts computer versions of opinion text at no charge to users and is visited approximately 120,000 times per month on average.
Online computer access to official versions of opinions will continue to be provided on the lexis.com research service, and offline on CD-ROM, the Supreme Court said.
Acceptance of the Matthew Bender proposal follows a recommendation by the California Advisory Committee on Publication of the Official Reports, which resulted from the committee’s study of Official Reports publication and issuance of a request for publication proposals earlier this year.
The advisory committee was appointed by George and consists of Supreme Court Justice Carol Corrigan, its chair; Pam Giarrizzo, chief counsel for the secretary of state; Manuel Medeiros, state solicitor general for the attorney general; Joseph L. Chairez, representing the president of the State Bar; Nanna Frye, librarian for the Court of Appeal in San Diego; and Edward W. Jessen, reporter of decisions for the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal.
By statute, the contracting officials for the state are the chief justice, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the State Bar president and the reporter of decisions.
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