Chart compiled by Joe Hart from Judiciary Municipal Court Statistics

OCEAN CITY – Local courts were really busy during the last half of last year.

According to court statistics released Monday Jan. 25 by the state judiciary, municipal courts in this county saw more than 57,000 new filings (incoming cases) between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2009. That figure is 4 percent greater than over the same period in 2008.

The report broke down criminal cases into indictable, disorderly persons and other criminal offenses. Traffic cases were broken down into DWI, moving violations and parking offenses. Of the county’s total, 10,020 were criminal cases while 47,682 were traffic cases.

More than 12,500 or 20 percent of all county cases were handled in Ocean City Municipal Court, due to its 1,468 criminal cases and particularly its many traffic violations 11,087. In fact, Ocean City’s meter maids wrote a county-leading 7,820 parking tickets.

The next busiest courts overall were North Wildwood with 8,364 cases – 1,596 criminal and 6,768 traffic– and Cape May with 6,992 cases – 360 criminal and 6,632 traffic.

Wildwood Municipal Court had the most indictable (519), disorderly persons (810), and total criminal cases (2,104). Middle Township had the most DWI cases with 82 and the second most moving violations with 2,405 behind only Ocean City with 3,219.

On the other side of the spectrum, the two sleepiest municipal courts were in West Wildwood with 139 total cases – 48 criminal and 91 traffic and the court shared between West Cape May and Cape May Point with 328 cases – 72 criminal and 256 traffic.

The judiciary also released its Superior Court statistics Jan. 25. Those figures showed 7,351 total cases in Cape May County courts – 668 criminal, 3,912 civil and 2,771 family.