Senate Judiciary committee reviews annual miscellaneous judiciary bill, clears S.12 by 4-1 vote

Eric Fitzpatrick, staff from the Office of Legislative Council, told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday that the annual judiciary miscellaneous bill packages technical corrections and several minor substantive changes to multiple court and probate statutes.

The bill collects changes ranging from clarifying diversion program language and correcting cross-references to adjusting how certain civil judicial‑bureau descriptions read, aligning juvenile diversion language with last year’s Act 180, and proposing fixes to apparent conflicts in statutes of limitation for claims against decedents’ estates.

Fitzpatrick summarized section-by-section requests, many of which the Judiciary or outside practitioners submitted. He said section 1 clarifies diversion availability by inserting the word “available” to remove ambiguity about whether diversion applies statewide. He described a proposal to let the General Assembly determine the number of superior judges (replacing a fixed figure of 34) so future adjustments would not require statute renumbering. He said the judicial bureau statute text will be corrected to reflect that prohibitions related to minors and tobacco also cover procurement (purchase/obtaining), and that an offense currently described using criminal terminology (“fine”) will be corrected to refer to a…