Municipal court will not be held in the Georgia cities of Summerville or Trion until at least October, Chattooga County Chief Magistrate Tracy Maddux confirmed Monday.
The city of Summerville was supposed to hold municipal court Tuesday, Maddux said, but due to the rising number of positive COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the area, city officials decided postponing proceedings was the best course of action. The same is true for proceedings in Trion, where court would have been held Monday night.
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“We are waiting on those cases to be cleared up, and once they are, we will hopefully be back. What we are trying to avoid now is the backlog we got last year when COVID was at its worst,” Maddux said. “We got several months behind then and had to play catch-up, so we want to avoid that. We’re not giving a number for how many days it will take before we reopen because we want to play it by ear and take it court date by court date.”
Maddux said decisions about when to open proceedings again will be made with the safety of everyone involved, from employees to local residents, in mind. He said he expects the court to be able to open again soon.