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# System prepended metadata

title: Rules of the Municipal Courts

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<h1>Rules of the Municipal Courts</h1>
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These rules shall be cited as Herm. M. Ct #(#)

<h3>RULE 1 - GENERAL</h3>

1. The Clerk of the Municipal Court, the Chief Judge, or person otherwise responsible for the assignment of a case to a judge, shall ensure that the case gets assigned a case number. Case numbers shall be formatted as follows where the number symbols indicate a randomly generated number and “YYYY” indicates the numbers of the current year:
    1. Criminal: YYYYCR#####
    2. Civil: YYYYCV####
    3. Expungement: YYYYEX#####
    4. Warrant Appeal: YYYYWA#####

<h3>RULE 2 - EFFECTIVE CRIMINAL SUBMISSIONS</h3>

1. Criminal submissions (those from the City Attorney's Office) must be promptly formatted by the Clerk of the Municipal Court, the Chief Judge, or the person otherwise designated. The case number will be assigned as described in Rule 1 and the matter transferred to the appropriate charging agency for the filing of a criminal information.
2. Once the respective charging agency has made their criminal decision and gathered their evidence, the submission should be transferred back to the Clerk who will then assign it to a judge.

<h3>RULE 3 - PRETRIAL PROCEDURE</h3>

1. A pretrial period in criminal and civil matters (expungement excluded) shall be ordered immediately following the assignment of a case to the docket of a judge, and shall last exactly ten days. The person responsible for the assignment of the case shall set the pretrial period ending exactly ten days or two hundred and forty hours after it has been assigned to a judge.
2. The pretrial period may end before the ordered ten days if both parties to a matter agree to forgo the remainder of the ordered pretrial period.
3. An individual may file a pretrial motion up until forty-eight (48) hours before the end of the pretrial period.
4. A party may only respond once to a pretrial motion if they wish to respond at all. That response must be filed within forty-eight (48) hours of the motion being made.
5. A judge may not permit the filing of any motion or response that has is made outside of the pretrial period.
6. At the end of the pretrial period, the judge shall enter an order to all pretrial motions that have not already been decided. The judge is otherwise able to enter an order immediately after a motion is made and both parties respond or decline to respond.
7. The judge, immediately following the pretrial period, shall entertain all reasonable efforts to ensure that the case moves to trial.