If you've missed a court date in Atlanta, now you can go to the courthouse and get same-day service to make things right.

The Atlanta Municipal Court is launching a Failure-To-Appear (FTA) Walk-In Docket on Monday, July 6, aiming to remove any rescheduling hassle.

Municipal Court Administrator Ryan Shepard says it's a customer service initiative, borne from an analysis of the volume of FTA cases.

"About 40,000 annually would fail to appear out of about 250,000 cases," says Shepard.  "It's a pretty significant number of folks to miss. But what we saw is that about half those folks would come in and reconcile their cases without any intervention from us.  So we thought, 'Why not make it easier for those folks?' And there's probably a bunch of other people out there who want to do that, but maybe they come and it's busy or they stop by and they can't be seen, and so we were like, 'Well, why don't we just create the capacity as opposed to leaving it to chance for people who want to get their matters behind them.'"

The court also extended from 21 days to 30 the cooling-off period of time before a missed date enters the process of triggering a bench warrant.  Shepard says even people with long-outstanding cases and active warrants can use the docket.

"Doesn't matter how old the citation is," says Shepard. "We just want folks to have a chance to resolve them."

The FTA walk-in dockets are scheduled Monday-Friday at 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.  The cutoff time to check in and be added to either docket is one hour before start time: 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.

All nine judges voted unanimously for the Walk-In Calendar, and will rotate the days on which they preside over the docket.

“It is our duty to provide the citizens of our great city the opportunity to have their matters resolved in a convenient and timely manner,” said Municipal Court Chief Judge Christopher Ward.

Shepard notes no one else is doing an FTA Calendar this way.

"I think this is a game-changer for our Court," he said.

Judges have discretion to impose a fine of up to $200 in FTA cases, and the Walk-In Calendar doesn't change that. But Shepard says historically, judges levy a $100 penalty and sometimes waive it altogether if a defendant has documentation of a family or medical emergency that kept them from court.

"We're not looking at this as a cash grab or anything to try to increase revenue, so to speak," says Shepard. "It's an opportunity for us to just be a more customer-friendly and efficient operation, and that's how we're looking at it."

For additional information on the FTA Walk-In Calendar, you can log on to court.atlantaga.gov or contact the Municipal court at (404) 954-6714.