The First Judicial District needs another judge to help handle civil complaints in Santa Fe, Los Alamos and Rio Arriba counties, the district’s top judge said during a budget hearing Tuesday.

“Our district has so much litigation coming to it from all over the state,” Chief Judge Bryan Biedscheid told the Legislative Finance Committee. “We’ve got cases coming from everywhere for civil. We also have unique cases being brought by, for instance, the [state] Department of Justice against seemingly entire industries, and those cases take a great deal of time.”

According to a graph Biedscheid showed lawmakers, the number of wrongful death cases filed in the district increased from 61 in fiscal year 2015 to 244 in fiscal year 2024, with 327 expected to be filed in fiscal year 2026 if the trend c

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