A promised fix to a crowded court system in Missouri turns out to be a disaster.

  Just months after lawmakers okayed a law to clear clogged dockets they've already repealed it.

  10,000 traffic violators were supposed to walk through the doors of the Greene County Justice Center in 2009.

  Up to 2,000 of them didn't.

  And that's why state legislators passed a bill making some minor offenses "infractions."

  "I think they were just trying to put in a system that would move the docket more quickly," explains Greene County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Amy Fite.

  She's talking about an overcrowded docket, made worse by no-shows who then received warrants and alternative court dates.

  The infractions were to be handled civilly- meaning no warrants- but rather a default judgment.

  Get your ticket, ditch court, lose your case and pay a fine.

  Unfortunately, that never happened.

  "The civil rules have different procedures required before you can get a default judgement , so that kind of was the catch," Fite says.

  The Greene County Prosecutor's Office and others all across the state didn't have the staff to complete those procedures.

  The result?

  When violators didn't come to court they simply got a new date, further crowding the docket.

  "After talking to some judges we felt it best to go back to the drawing board and that's why we've repealed it this year."

  Representative Bob Dixon says the bill's intentions were good; in fact, he claims the legislature proposed and passed it last year  at the urging of the office that oversees the court system.

  "It's a good example of things needing to be done at the local level," he tells us.

  Less than six months later the quick fix is nixed, and suddenly the original problem doesn't seem nearly as bad as the one this short-lived bill created.

  Lawmakers say they're going to permanently fix the system in 2012.

  The new law is almost identical to the way things were before last August, with the addition of a clause that- in two years- lets infractions be treated criminally.