ST. JOHNSBURY — Two employees at the Caledonia County courthouse tested positive for Covid-19 last week, disrupting legal proceedings and raising some concern about how visitors are informed of exposure risk.
Officials closed the courthouse last Tuesday and Wednesday, and kept it closed Monday, after a staffing shortage caused by the employees’ test results.
“The two employees who received positive test results earlier in the month will return after their health care providers give them clearance to return to work,” said Patricia Gabel, court administrator for the Vermont Judiciary. “At this time we have no other reports of positive tests and we are not aware of any other courthouses that are closed today.”
The situation appeared to have been cleared up by Tuesday. But how court officials handled the incident has left behind frustrations and questions of transparency.
According to the Caledonian Record, which first reported the positive cases, court officials last Monday twice denied knowledge of any employees at the courthouse testing positive for the coronavirus or being subject to contract tracing.
But a judge in court that day repeatedly excused himself to perform tasks usually done by clerks and mentioned a staffing shortage, the newspaper reported.
The next day, the paper reported, Gabel told a reporter she had since learned about the test results.
Corby Gary, a St. Johnsbury private defense lawyer, had been working remotely Monday when his webcam stopped working during virtual court proceedings. So he drove to the courthouse instead.
On the way there, he said, someone contacted him to tell him that court employees may have been exposed to the virus.
But when he went through the security and health screening at the front door, Gary said, no one mentioned that the two absent employees had possibly contracted Covid-19.
“Nobody from inside the courthouse warns me, or anybody else entering the courthouse, of the potential exposure from inside the courthouse outward,” he said this week.
Asked if that concerned him, he said, “I find it to be a matter of potential life and death.”
“I can’t tell you how goddamn mad I am,” he said.
A local court official last Tuesday called him to ask him to contact his clients who had been in the courthouse in recent days to inform them, he said. That doesn’t seem right to him.
“From Friday through Monday, the court system intentionally by policy did not advise or warn me — or two clients in morning — of court staff exposure by contact tracing, yet the court system now directs me to contact clients to warn them of possible exposure by contact tracing at the courthouse,” he said.
Gabel said Tuesday that officials wait for positive test results before reaching out to people. She said when a court employee tests positive, the Judiciary will contact people who have been in the building that person works in.
“We had been relying on our own computer system for contact information for court visitors, since courts remain closed to nonparticipants,” she said. “However, we learned from our Caledonia experience that that method takes a long time.”
The court system has now implemented a visitor sign-in list at the screening station so that officials can more easily notify people potentially exposed to the virus.
Gabel confirmed that the Judiciary’s policy is to not inform people when an employee is out of work, including when they are out of work to seek a Covid-19 test.
The reason, she said, is partly because informing people “is not likely to provide an individual with meaningful protections against becoming infected via airborne transmission … more than the protocols the Judiciary has in place,” such as masking and social distancing.
Caledonia County Sheriff Dean Shatney said he was told to inform deputies who had been in court in the few days before the building closed last Tuesday about the potential exposure.
He said the risk of contracting the virus is one his deputies undertake, like any other risk in the line of duty.
“We have the same risk as going after someone who broke into a store or something like that,” he said, “We’re going to continue to provide security and safety to the community.”
Caledonia County State’s Attorney Jessica Zeleski, whose office sits in the basement of the courthouse, said her staff members haven’t been appearing in court in person since March. The only potential for exposure, she said, would have been through court mail.
But because of the recent outbreak in the building, she limited in-person staff to herself and one other person. Everyone else is working from home, she said, and she isn’t sure when that might change.
Asked when court officials informed her of the potential virus cases, Zeleski declined to comment.
Gabel said there isn’t a specific number of staff absences that would determine whether a courthouse is shut down. Rather, she said, the decision centers on a court’s ability to still conduct its business.
“Our goal is to keep the courts open at all times to minimize disruptions,” she said. “That’s not always possible if staff are quarantining or awaiting test results themselves.”
Closing a courthouse, though, generally doesn’t interrupt the staff’s ability to conduct remote hearings, Gabel said, which the Judiciary has been holding for months.
