Judge Veenstra provides Wright County 2024 overview

Wright County Associate Judge Lynette Veenstra noted that the Wright County court system had another busy year in 2024. This was included in a detailed report that she released to the public recently.
Overall, the total number of cases were up from 2023. Judge Veenstra said that was primarily due to Mountain Grove Municipal Court moving to Hartville back on April 1 of last year.
The county ended up taking on 728 City of Mountain Grove cases since the move of their municipal court.
In comparing the year to year,  some categories show a substantial increase in filings.
The large increase came in the Associate Civil cases, which were primarily credit card debt collection cases.
There was also an increase of more than 30 orders of protection.
Other categories had significant decreases in filings. She said “most notably criminal cases in both the Associate and Circuit divisions along with the City of Hartville cases.”
There was an encouraging decrease in DWI/Drug Court cases from 71 to 52, and traffic crash cases went down from 2,465 to 2,346. According to reports from the Office of State Courts Administrator, there were 5,049 cases filed in Wright County in 2023, compared to 5,238 cases filed in 2024.