Last week, we reviewed which Districts of the Appellate Court produced the Supreme Court’s civil and criminal dockets.  This week and in the weeks to come, we’ll be drilling down on those numbers to the trial courts.  The last time we reviewed the county data eighteen months ago, we reviewed all the counties of Illinois together, so this time, we’re looking at the data a little differently: five years at a time, how much of the total caseload did each county assigned to the District account for?

We’ll begin with the Second District (since the First District only includes one county – Cook).  Thirteen counties are assigned to the Second District: Lake, Du Page, McHenry, Winnebago, De Kalb, Ogle, Kane, Boone, Jo Daviess, Stephenson, Carroll, Kendall and Lee.  In Table 1258, we report the population of each county, but to make comparing this data to case totals a bit easier, we convert each county’s population into a percentage of the District-wide total.  Du Page county accounts for 28.75% of the population of the District.  Lake is 22.06% and Kane is 16.16%.  McHenry and Winnebago are just south of ten percent – 9.68% and 9.26%, respectively.  The rest of the counties are quite small.  Kendall county has 3.6%, De Kalb 3.3%, Boone county is 1.7%, Ogle county is 1.68%, Stephenson county is 1.5% and Lee county is 1.13%.  Jo Daviess county is 0.71% and Carroll county is 0.48% of the District.

In 1990, the Court decided three civil cases from Lake county, three from Du Page and one each from McHenry, Winnebago, De Kalb and Ogle counties.  In 1991, the Court decided three civil cases from Kane county and one each from Lake, Du Page, McHenry and Winnebago counties.  The following year, the Court decided seven civil cases from Du Page county, three from Lake county, two from Boone county and one each from McHenry, Winnebago and Kane counties.  In 1993, the Court decided one case each from Du Page, McHenry and De Kalb counties.  In 1994, the Court decided six cases from Du Page county, three from Kane county and one each from Lake and McHenry.

In 1995, the Court decided three civil cases from Lake county, two from Du Page and one from Kane.  In 1996, the Court decided four cases from Lake county, two from Kane and one each from Du Page, Winnebago, Stephenson and Lee.  The following year, the Court decided one case apiece from Lake, Du Page, Winnebago and Ogle counties.  In 1998, the Court decided six cases from Du Page county, four from Lake and one from McHenry.  In 1999, the Court decided four civil cases from Du Page county and one from Lake county.

In 2000, the Court decided five cases from Du Page county, three from Lake county and one from Winnebago.  In 2001, the Court decided five cases from Du Page county and one each from Ogle, Kane and Kendall.  The following year, the Court decided four cases from Du Page county and one from McHenry and Boone.  In 2003, the Court decided two cases from Du Page county and one each from Lake, McHenry and Kane.  In 2004, the Court decided five civil cases from Du Page county, three from Lake county and one from Winnebago.

Join us back here next time as we finish our review of the Second District civil cases.

Image courtesy of Flickr by Ken Lund (no changes).