Santa Clara County

Multi-day power outage at Santa Clara County family court causes frustration

NBC Universal, Inc. It’s been days of frustration for people showing up to the Santa Clara County family courts in San Jose. Marianne Favro reports.

It's been days of frustration for people showing up to the Santa Clara County family courts in San Jose.

They arrive only to find the building closed due to a dayslong power outage.

The outage forced the center to close Monday, and it has remained closed ever since. That means divorce proceedings, child custody cases and other hearings had to be postponed.

A court spokesperson said stormy weather caused the initial outage Monday. The weather also cut power to the downtown superior court and the old courthouse.

While those two buildings only saw brief outages, the family justice center was still closed three days later as the county deals with technical challenges of bringing all the databases inside the building back online.

Marie showed up Wednesday for a hearing for her daughter only to be left frustrated.

"I didn’t know it was closed," she said. "I just wasted half my afternoon. I took time off of work for this."

Jason Perry said Wednesday was his third day of being turned away. He said his divorce proceeding scheduled for Wednesday afternoon was delayed, and he’ll have to wait for the court to give him a new date.

"It’s very much an inconvenience," he said.

A temporary office was set up in a jury room across the street to handle emergency requests such as temporary restraining orders, but most hearings were postponed.

A court spokesperson said the power should be restored and the family justice center should reopen by Thursday morning.

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