NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Channel 4 I-Team has found documentation of problems that existed before Juvenile Court Clerk Vic Lineweaver was arrested last year.

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The problems impacted children and also foreshadowed the events that led to Lineweaver's arrest.

Last year, a juvenile court judge held Lineweaver in contempt of court for failing to locate case files and had him arrested.

He's now fighting to erase that charge from his record and said that he's done nothing wrong.

But years before his arrest, years before the I-Team's undercover video showing Lineweaver at home in his bathrobe when he said he was at a meeting and before this year’s complaints of more missing files, there were court cases that critics said were problematic, the I-Team’s Jeremy Finley reported.

The cases were obtained by Channel 4 News. The cases that have rarely been seen by the public involved taking children away from their parents permanently.

Judges said some of the cases were delayed for months or longer in large part because of errors made in the juvenile court clerk's office, which is headed by Lineweaver.

"Clearly, there's a problem down there," said former juvenile prosecutor Jim Todd.

The cases the I-Team obtained came from the court of appeals and were from four years ago.

Finley reported that after he read the case files, he could see why Judge Frank Clement was so angry with Lineweaver's office.

Clement wrote that the conditions of some case files were "abysmal and contain deficiencies…affecting children whose lives hang in the balance."

"You're taking a child away from a parent. I don't know how much more serious you get," Todd said.

The cases are parental termination cases that can potentially lead to the severing of all ties between a parent and a child.

And when the case comes to the court of appeals, by law, all the judges can look at to determine their judgment is the case file, because there is no live testimony.

Other judges wrote that they found "extraneous, irrelevant documents" and "documents of the utmost importance missing."

Clement wouldn't comment about a specific case but described the problems that situations like these pose for appellate courts.

"You can't make the decision so that there can either be reunification or termination. Yes, that's frustrating," he said.

One case involved a father fighting to keep his parental rights. The judges in the case wrote that the clerk's office failed to provide a recording of testimony, so the judges said they couldn't make a ruling and the case came to a halt.

The children involved in the case were left in limbo, and the case had to be retried later.

"When you're talking about trying them over, you may be talking about trying a three or four day trial over again, and that just really takes the wind out of your sails," said Juvenile Court Judge Betty Adams Green.

"Whatever it does for the court, that's not the issue; the issue is what it does for the child and for the parents who are sitting there wondering if they will have a child or not," Green said.

Lineweaver sent his spokesman and Director of Operations Julius Sloss to talk to Finley.

"In these cases, you don't believe that you are at fault for any of the criticisms?" Finley said.

"From the research we've done, I don't think we're at fault on anything here," Sloss said.

Sloss argued that judges were criticizing not just his office but all juvenile clerks' offices and the Department of Children's Services for mishandling cases. A clerk staff was also criticized but was later trained to handle the cases appropriately.

Sloss also said that at the time of the stalled case involving the father trying to keep his children, an informal agreement existed that not all juvenile courts would have recorded testimony. That's since changed, Sloss said.

"Are we hearing excuse after excuse from your office?" Finley said.

"No, I mean, we'll be the first to tell you, Jeremy, if this office is at fault in something, please let us know," Sloss said.

"To be fair, the juvenile court clerk's office has inherent problems that it inherited because the juvenile justice system is overloaded. And I don't know if the juvenile court clerk's office has the funding or the ability to clean its act up, I really don’t," Todd said.

Sloss added that some of the cases went through clerks' offices along with Lineweaver's, so he feels the omissions in the records happened somewhere else.

And in the opinions, the judges specifically fault juvenile clerks' offices including the Davidson County clerk's office.

What will it take to turn the juvenile clerk’s office around?

Finley reported that Sloss, Lineweaver's director of operations, is credited for turning the office around. The office has also only recently begun scanning files electronically, which is something other courts have done for years.

Related: Click here to contact the I-Team.