7 September 2004. The commercial vendor On-Line Information Services, Inc. provides fee-based access to the trial court records for all counties in Alabama. According to information available at the Web site, subscribers have access to active cases and select disposed cases since 1970. Coverage includes civil and criminal cases, domestic relations and child support, traffic cases, outstanding alias warrants, trial court dockets and attorney case information. You can also access the state's "real-time" database and set up tracking and notification. 25 February 2002. Look up information about civil and criminal cases on appeal in Alaska courts. Search by party name, appellate case number, or trial court number. The system provides basic case information, including parties names, attorneys, documents filed, transcript availability, and more. 25 February 2002. Search the trial court name index, which contains case information for lawsuits filed in 30 Alaska counties. It covers civil and criminal matters, but not appellate, confidential or traffic cases. Generally, the database covers 1990 to present, but searchers will find some older data. Some of the records include dates of birth along with the usual case information. 25 April 2002. Revised 17 April 2008. The Arizona Judicial Branch offers a database of case information from 137 out of 180 courts in Arizona. The database covers criminal and civil cases, but does not offer information about sealed, non-served domestic violence, mental health, juvenile, or probate cases. It provides name, date of birth, city/state/zip (but not street address), criminal offense (if applicable), docket entries, and more.
When testing the database, I received many browser error messages. It appears the state limits the number of simultaneous users. If you receive an error message, it's best to try again later.
17 December 2004. Revised 9 December 2005. Find a commercial database of briefs filed in U.S. federal and state courts. Search by keyword, case name or attorney name to find information, including an abstract, about matching briefs. Downloading briefs incurs a charge, but the searching is free. Registered users (free) can take advantage of an e-mail notification service for discovering briefs that match your search terms. 5 November 2002. Find gateway access to case information on civil and criminal matters in California appellate courts. Features include docket entries, trial court information (including case number), future scheduled actions, and if applicable, a link to the case on appeal in the Supreme Court. 28 August 2000. Findlaw, in partnership with AccessLaw, provides free access to California court opinions from 1934 to present. Search by keyword, citation, party name, or docket number. Or, browse recent decisions by date; or browse individual volumes of the official reporters.
While case law via this service contains helpful jump citations to the official reporter, it should not be considered an official source of California case law.
4 December 2002. The Center for New York City Law at New York Law School provides free search access to the administrative decisions of four city agencies. Now covering the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), the Office of Collective Bargaining (OCB), the Conflicts of Interest Board (CIB), and the Loft Board, the Center has plans to add the decisions of three more agencies in coming months. The site publishes OATH decisions from 1990 to present, with select coverage of earlier decisions. It posts OCB decisions from 1968, all CIB decisions, and Loft Board decisions from 1996 to present.
The site also provides subscription access to CityLaw, a bi-monthly publication reporting on key legislative, administrative and judicial decisions affecting the City of New York, and CityRegs, a bi-weekly fax news service that summarizes current proposed or adopted New York City rules and regulations. Visitors may read select CityLaw articles and select past issues of CityRegs for free. 25 February 2002. Search for case information about open or closed (but not sealed) matters from Colorado district and county courts. Types of cases covered by the database include civil, domestic relations, water, traffic, small claims, as well as, felonies and misdemeanors. Searchers will not find cases pertaining to probate, mental health and juvenile matters. Nor will they find social security numbers or street addresses.
Other public records available at the site include business information records, divorces, marriages, UCC liens, and the Social Security Death Index. 15 April 2002. Search for civil and family court matters by personal or business name. The database covers courts in several Connecticut counties, but does not specify years included. It provides the names of the parties, docket number, docket summary, case type, disposition date, date filed, attorneys, and more.
Update: 29 June 2005. The June 2005 issue of Public Records Update, a free monthly newsletter of BRB Publications, warns researchers about incomplete data at the Connecticut Judicial Civil Records Web site. The site states that it makes records available for up to 10 years. However, it periodically purges the database, and many "cases closed by settlement, dismissal, withdrawal, and even stipulated judgments may be removed from the website within a year after disposition." Recently, over half of the records in the database were purged, reducing the number from 309,000 to 145,000.
The caution should serve as another example of the importance of manual verification when you need a complete picture of a person's or business's litigation history. 28 September 2000. LLRX.com offers search access to source information for federal and state court rules, forms and dockets. The database includes links to over 700 sources. Search by keyword (e.g., pennsylvania forms to find links to federal and state court forms), or browse by one or more of the following criteria: jurisdiction, document type, or state. The database returns links to credible sources that match your query.
A tremendous improvement over the former court rules guide, this resource is easy to use, uncluttered, and fast.
13 May 2003. Revised 17 April 2008. This commercial research service provides searching and monitoring services for cases in federal district, bankruptcy and appellate courts as well as some state courts. Subscribers may order case documents online. The service also offers an interface to the PACER U.S. Case Party Index, which enables searching by name, social security number (SSN) or employer identification number (EIN), assuming these appear in the case caption. Access requires a paid subscription. The site also offers limited guest access upon registration. 19 July 2007. Watchdog organization, Project On Government Oversight (POGO), makes available this database of reports on misconduct involving the top 50 federal contractors. It covers the years 1995 to the present and provides the source documents for each instance of misconduct.
Reports contain the contractor's name and address, a brief statement about the company, the amount of federal contract money award, the number of instances of misconduct, the total amount of money involved in the misconduct, links to various relevant documents (e.g., the company's 10-k and Web site), a description of each instance of misconduct along with the cited reference, copies of POGO's correspondence with the contractor, and links to descriptions of pending cases that are not counted as instances of misconduct.
Researchers should note that the database is limited to information on 50 companies. 6 September 2002. Revised 25 February 2005. Search the U.S. Constitution, United States Code (USC), Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) or the Federal Register. Also find databases containing opinions from the Circuit Courts of Appeals, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court (1893-present). While some features at FindLaw improve the use of these resources over their availability elsewhere on the Web, researchers should take care to verify and update information they find. Other more current sources for the U.S. Constitution, USC, and CFR exist. You can also use this site to find other sources of federal and state case law and statutes. 24 June 2003. Florida's Clerks of Court provide subscriber and non-subscriber search access to civil case information, and other official records, in several, but not all, Florida counties. Search individual county courts or all available courts. Data provided includes the parties, filing date, county, type of document and more. Because the research system covers more than civil litigation, you can use it to find deeds, incorporations, death certificates, liens and more. You can also order certified or non-certified copies online. 18 May 2004. Case information aggregator Judici offers free and commercial search services for Illinois courts. For free, searchers can access and search one court at a time (see Participating Courts) to find criminal and civil case files. Currently, the site provides access to about 15 county courts in Illinois. Coverage varies from court to court, but averages from the late 1980s to present. Search by case number or party name. You can also limit the number of results by keyword in the description of the charge. Information provided includes case number, party name, date of birth, disposition, case type, judge, last known address, fines and fees and more. Paid subscribers can search all courts simultaneously and receive case updates and other services. 20 December 2001. The Canadian Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy provides a database containing a record of all bankruptcies and proposals filed in Canada from 1978 to present. It also contains a record of all private and court appointed receiverships filed in Canada from 1993 to present. Search by name and select optional criteria. Initial results reveal how many records match your search criteria. The site charges per 10 records retrieved. 15 February 2002. Revised 17 April 2008. The Iowa judiciary offers case information from civil, criminal, probate, and traffic courts in all of its counties and from appellate courts. System documentation indicates coverage runs from 1997 to present, but the sample queries I ran found many cases dating farther back. 26 February 2007. Revised 26 November 2007. Legal information Web site, Justia, offers a database for searching federal district court civil cases. Coverage spans 1 January 2004 to present. Browse case filings or conduct a search by party name, court, type of lawsuit or date. Information provided includes case caption, date filed, court, judge, type of lawsuit and cause of action. Justia also provides a link to the docket sheet. To retrieve it, you must have a subscription with PACER.
Useful features include search-generated RSS feeds. Do a search using the above criteria (e.g., all Civil RICO cases in the E.D.PA) and then monitor new results via the RSS feed. You may also bookmark case information for a specific case using any one of about 20 social bookmarking tools, including Internet Explorer favorites, Del.icio.us, Google Bookmarks and Windows Live Bookmarks. 28 August 2000. Revised 25 June 2004. This subscription-based site provides a portal to case information and court docket systems for federal, state and local courts in the United States. It covers civil and criminal courts. Find online access to court docket sheets, basic case information, court calendars, opinions, orders, decisions, inmate information and document images. It also offers a Weblog on electronic filing and public records retrieval. 31 January 2008. Legal information site, Justia.com, makes it easy for you to find federal cases involving select companies or certain topics. Currently this section of Justia tracks federal case law involving Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay and Menu Foods. It also tracks new filings in cases by federal court topic number. So, for example, you may monitor new filings pertaining to employment and other civil rights, torts, contracts, intellectual property and more. Not only will you find new cases, but new filings in existing cases.
Please note: We were unable to find any documentation about the scope of coverage for these monitoring services. It's difficult to determine whether they track filings in all federal courts or select federal courts. 8 November 2007. The Citizen Media Law Project, jointly affiliated with Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Center for Citizen Media, makes available a database of information about legal threats. Threats include intellectual property infringement lawsuits, cease and desist letters, defamation actions, civil rights actions, and more. You may search by a variety of criteria including the type of threat, the parties involved, lawyers' names, verdict or settlement amounts, jurisdiction (not limited to the U.S.), Web sites involved, keyword and more. The information provided includes all the above that is relevant as well as the current status and a summary of the threat. Find analyst reports, company profiles, information about mergers and acquisitions, and more. Try the Company Library. 6 September 2000. Revised 18 April 2008. Exclusively available via LexisNexis (fee-based), CourtLink eAccess provides electronic access to court records in over 4,000 federal, state and local courts. CourtLink eFile - now available in 90 courts - provides online filing services. 28 August 2000. Revised 8 November 2000. lexisONE offers free case law, legal forms, and a legal sites guide. Find selected federal and state cases covering the past five years as well as a complete collection of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. Researchers may retrieve relevant decisions by citation or by keyword queries.
On 8 November 2000, Lexis rolls out phase two of LexisONE adding numerous free legal documents and forms, an expanded Internet Legal Guide, Matthew Bender forms (for a fee), and free access, by special arrangement and for a limited time, to the Martindale-Hubbell Law Digest. The enhanced site also includes articles on law technology, client development and practice management topics, legal news, information on lifestyle issues, and lexisONE Wireless for access to Lexis products and services via handheld devices.
This commercial resource offers court opinions from various state courts. Coverage varies. 28 February 2006. Revised 10 March 2008. The Maryland Judiciary makes available information on traffic, criminal and civil cases from state District and Circuit courts. Date coverage varies by jurisdiction. While Circuit court update frequency is almost immediate, there is a delay for Baltimore City, Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Search by name or case number to find full name, date of birth (when available), court, case type and filing date. Click the case number for more information. 12 February 2004. The Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court of Massachusetts offers this single search interface to publicly available cases. Search by docket number, party, attorney, originating court or originating court judge to find appellate case information and court docket sheets. A service of Georgia State University Law School, GSU Online, the Meta-Index provides a search interface to sites offering court opinions, statutes, legislation, regulations and more. This is an easy-to-use tool that guides researchers through varying search processes at different sites. The owners also regularly check the functionality of the site and its links. 15 February 2002. Revised 17 April 2008. Find case information from civil, criminal, probate, and traffic courts in many Missouri counties as well as from the State's appellate courts.
5 November 2001. Revised 31 January 2002. Merlin Information Services offers an index of bankruptcy filings data for all states from January 1992 to present. Query the database by company or personal name, or by social security number, to discover the existence of a bankruptcy filing. During early 2002, the site restricted access to paying customers. 25 March 2002. Revised 17 April 2008. Search for information about civil, criminal, and traffic court cases in district and magistrate courts in New Mexico. The system also provides docket sheets and covers cases initiated from 1997 to present. Some older cases also appear in the database. Some records contain dates of birth. The database permits searching by SSN and driver's license number. 24 June 2003. New York's Future Court Appearance System lets you search for pending civil matters in several New York county courts. Search by plaintiff, defendant, court number, lawyer or law firm name to find case information and references to documents filed. Some detail is also provided. Full text opinions are available for select counties. 25 March 2002. Search by name or zip code to find drunk driving cases. The database provides the name of the defendant, defendant's address, date of birth, court date, case number, citation number, and offense code and description.
I found no information about database coverage. The database appears to include only active cases. 15 February 2002. Find case information and dockets for appellate and district courts served by the Oklahoma Court Information System. The system provides information for civil, criminal, probate, traffic and other types of cases. Also use this system to find information about marriage and drivers licenses, tax liens, workers compensation claims, and more. Revised 5 September 2003. Listen to digital recordings of U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments or review the biographies of the 100+ justices that have served on the Supreme Court. The site also provides news concerning the U.S. Supreme Court and a listing of cases argued but not decided. Search or browse the site's collection of U.S. Supreme Court cases to find an abstract of a case, its participants (justices, attorneys), audio files (if available) of the oral argument and oral opinion, a transcript of the oral argument (if available) and a link to the written opinion at FindLaw. Recently, the site announced that it was converting many of the audio tapes to MP3 files. 28 August 2000. The PACER Service Center of the Administrative Office of the Courts offers three new search utilities. Search for a District by County Name retrieves the name of the federal district and appellate courts serving a particular county. Search for All Counties in a District finds county names associated with a specific federal district or appellate court. Search for Details by County Code returns the county name and state, as well as the names of the federal district and appellate courts, upon the entry of a county code. (Warning: the later feature takes a looooonnnng time to load.) 12 February 2004. The Pennsylvania Unified Judicial System provides a single search interface to the case information and docket sheets of select courts in the state. First, choose whether you want to search select Courts of Common Pleas or appellate courts (Supreme, Superior, Commonwealth). Search by docket number or court and at least one of a variety of other criteria. Results appear in a small table at the bottom of the page. You click the "select" link next to the docket number in the results table to display the docket sheet. It loads in a separate window. Make sure you turn off any pop-up blockers. 8 November 2007. Tabatha Marshall, a self-proclaimed phishbaiter, maintains this listing of companies alleged to be involved in online scams, especially those targeting job seekers. The list provides at least some of the following information: company name, affiliated businesses, type of alleged scams, e-mail contacts, contact names, associated phone numbers, source/s for the phone numbers, primary business address, source for the business address, Web site/s, Web page/s, and sample of the e-mail scam. Please note: While this is an excellent starting point for research on a suspicious company, you should take care to verify the information you find. Ms. Marshall's Web site, including the PhishBucket, is the subject of a defamation lawsuit filed in federal court (Middle District) in Florida on 1 November 2007 (6:07-CV-1740-ORL-22KRS). 18 March 2008. Currently an alpha test database, PreCYdent contains court opinions from the U.S. Supreme Court (1759-present), opinions from Federal Reporter, 2d series (1950-forward), Federal Reporter, 3d series (through August 2006), all published and unpublished opinions from the federal circuit courts (check timeliness by following the "our database" link on the home page), federal district court opinions since 2004 except for certain courts listed in "our database," and select state court opinions as listed in "our database."
According to a brief overview published in Law Technology News (free registration required), "the developers of this experimental legal search engine ... claim their tests outperform 'by a wide margin' Westlaw natural language search, not to mention other commercial databases."
PreCYdent is a concept-based search engine that supports Boolean connectors, wildcards and limited proximity searching. Follow the advanced search link and click "Boolean operators" to review the help documentation on constructing a query. 5 September 2003. Created and maintained by the library staff at Stanford Law School, this site offers the full text of complaints, briefs, court decisions and other filings dealing with federal class action securities fraud litigation. It also provides related news headlines, reports (statistics), articles, information about settlements and more. You may browse by company name (other indexes available). Or search the database by litigant name, ticker symbol, court or date (month and year). Google powers a site search feature for finding filings by keyword. 18 April 2000. Revised 27 October 2000. The official U.S. Supreme Court Web site opened Monday, 17 April 2000. Visitors may learn about the court, primarily by reading excerpts from a booklet prepared by the Court. Also available is the Court's calendar (current Term), argument calendars since March 2000, hearing lists since October 1999, and the Court's schedule.
Visitors also will find bar admissions information and a form, court rules and two case handling guides. Interestingly, the site offers SLIP opinions leaving the electronic dissemination of BENCH opinions to continue with Project Hermes (See GPO Access or Cornell).
Researchers concerned about the official status of these opinions should note:
"In case of discrepancies between the print and electronic versions..., the print version controls." See URL http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/info_opinions.html.
The site further warns that it replaces BENCH opinions usually within hours of their issuance. In the event differences appear between BENCH and SLIP opinions, the SLIP opinion rules.
I do not, however, recommend deleting your bookmarks to the Cornell Project Hermes site. The Supreme Court site intends to retain slip opinions online only until the end of the Term or until they appear in preliminary print form, whichever occurs later. Moreover, it fails to provide a way to search them. Researchers may want to depend on it strictly for current awareness and document retrieval.
Government resources note!28 September 2000. The U.S. Supreme Court docket system is now available via the Web site. It covers the current and immediately preceeding Terms.
Case law note!27 October 2000. Beginning with the 2000/2001 Term, the U.S. Supreme Court offers transcripts of oral arguments on a 10 to 15 day delay. Select a federal appellate court from a map of the United States. 5 June 2000. Revised 8 April 2005. PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) provides access to an index of court filings in federal district, bankruptcy and appellate courts. Conduct one search in available courts nationwide, or search individual courts. Review the site's Courts Not on Index to determine whether the court you want is available via the index. This is an easy inexpensive way to find federal civil or criminal litigation involving companies or individuals. Access requires a subscription. This database contains opinions from 1893 to present. Retrieve them by official U.S. citation, party name, or keyword. Researchers may also browse the database by year or U.S. Reports volume number. Cornell Legal Information Institute provides access to Project Hermes bench opinions issued since May 1990. Browse by date, topic or party name. Some historical decisions are also available.
The Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII) provides two RSS news feeds for current U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The feeds consists of case captions, decision dates and brief descriptions of the questions of law or holding of the court. The first offers the recent opinions of the court while the second provides a summary of the most current opinions. 10 September 2002. This commercial site offers databases of state and federal case law.
An alternative to traditional online legal research systems, VersusLaw provides access to federal and state case law, as well as, federal statutes and regulations, legal news, and forms. Online documentation indicates tribal and foreign court availability, but does not specify which courts.
LLRX features three articles by reviewer T.R. Halvorson, which cover this service. See Survey of Online Legal Information Alternatives for Small Law Firms and Public Law Libraries, Preview of VersusLaw’s USConline, CFRonline, and CFRupdate!, and VersusLaw's V.: A View through the Southern California Online Users Group Rating Scale Lenses.
5 November 2002. Revised 17 April 2008. Civil and criminal courts in Virginia provide access to case information via this gateway. You may search only one jurisdiction at a time, and date coverage may vary. You will find matters relating misdemeanors, felonies, civil litigation, divorce, traffic, etc. Those conducting due diligence or criminal investigations should note that these databases do not contain criminal histories nor substitute for a manual search of court indexes. The terms of use specifically state that information in these databases does not constitute the official record.
Please note: Javascript must be enabled at this site. 25 May 2005. Revised 20 March 2008. This site provides several search options for finding litigation in Washington trial and appellate courts from 1975 to present. While you may search by person or business name or by case number, you must search each court, as well as each year, separately.
Types of cases available include traffic violations, misdemeanors, domestic disputes, civil, criminal, including juvenile offenders, and probate. You will not find disputes concerning adoption, paternity, juvenile dependency or mental illness.
Initial results for criminal searches provide the case number, filing date, defendant's name, and occasionally, a broadly described cause of action (misdemeanor, felony). Initial results for civil cases provide the case number, filing date, party's name and cause of action. If the case is active, you may retrieve the docket sheet.
Washington Courts has a fee-based service called JIS-Link which offers more search and reporting features.
28 February 2006. A commercial service by Northwest Location Services, Inc. of Wauna, Washington, this database provides fee-based access to civil and criminal court records. It covers Superior (appellate) courts in 39 counties and District (lower) and Municipal courts in many counties. The site documents the jurisdictions covered as well as the availability of historical data. There is no coverage of small claims or civil cases -- excepting domestic violence protection orders -- in the lower courts. Queries may find information on felonies, misdemeanors, upper-level civil cases, divorce proceedings, probate matters, traffic violations and juvenile matters. 11 February 2002. Subscribers to Westlaw, a commercial online legal research service, may customize their access to include a company information guide. Go to MyWestlaw, and then select topical tabs. Check the box next to Company Information.
A tab, labeled Company Information, should now appear on the Welcome screen. Click it to find Westlaw database recommendations based on the type of information you seek. If you are looking for sources of information about company executives, for example, see the suggestions under Key People. Other categories include Company Overviews, Company Directories, Corporate Family Tree, Registered Agent & Public Filings, Litigation History, Financials, Securities Filings, Intellectual Property, Products & Brands, and News. 22 February 2005. The Translation Station, a translation and interpretation services firm, offers this search tool for finding patent, trademark or copyright cases pending in federal courts. You may search by case type and party name, court, state or date to find basic case information. There is a charge to retrieve full-text court dockets. However, the information provided is sufficient for retrieval via the less expensive U.S. Party/Case Index. 15 February 2002. This site provides access to criminal, traffic, forfeiture, family and civil case information and judgments in circuit courts for most (but not all) Wisconsin counties.
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