The Federal Courts' docket database PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is increasing the amount of free searches/documents users can access before generating a bill.

In it's October 2019 quarterly newsletter, PACER announced that:

"Beginning Jan. 1, 2020, if a PACER user quarterly usage is $30 or less, the bill will be waived. This is an increase from the existing $15 or less quarterly fee waiver. Users will see this reflected in the April 2020 billing statement. This will result in more than 75 percent of users accessing court records paying no fee in a given quarter. The Judicial Conference approved this action at their September 17, 2019, meeting."

The post PACER Increases Amount Users Can Search/Download Before Generating a Bill appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Currently, Big Case Bot is following and posting documents from:

• Nat'l Inst. of Family and Life v. Becerra
• Standing Rock Sioux Tribe v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
• Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels v. Donald J. Trump aka David Dennison
• ACLU v. Madison County, Miss.

among other now-current trials.

In its documentation, the bot is described as follows:

The bot uses PACER RSS feeds to gather the latest filings from 74 U.S. District Courts and five federal courts of appeals and stores the docket entries in a database. It matches new filings against a preselected list of major cases, scrapes matching documents from PACER, uploads them to a DocumentCloud project and posts the results on Twitter.

Note that some federal district courts -- including those in the Eastern District of Virginia, the District of Maryland and the District of Hawaii -- have elected not to publish an RSS feed from their dockets. As a result, Big Cases can't follow cases in those districts. Most federal courts of appeal also do not pulbish [sic] RSS feeds of new docket entries.

Big Case Bot was created by USA Today investigative reporter Brad Heath. In his Twitter bio, Heath descibes himself as, "covering law and justice. Data, documents and 'convoluted KGB style back-door' stuff." The bot utilizes the Python programming language.

Anyone can download and customize the code (using their own PACER and other login credentials) to download documents based on parameters they set. Note that according to the bot's documentation, the Big Case Bot code, "has only been tested on a machine running CentOS Linux 7."

The post Twitter Bot Follows Federal Cases of Note; Posts Free Case Documents appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Dear U.S. Supreme Court website: The ABA Preview of U.S. Supreme Court Cases provides merit and amicus briefs from 2003-present. You first must choose a Term (e.g., 2014-2015) and then select from an alphabetical list by party name. Or, to quickly find your case from the long list, we would recommend you use your Find function (Control f for PCs and Command f for Macs) and enter part of the case name into the find box to be taken directly to the listed case. You can then choose any of the briefs to view full-text.

Another site that archives merit and amicus briefs is Scotusblog, but it doesn't go back as far as the ABA site--its archives go back only to 2007. However, it offers some useful features that the ABA site does not offer. For instance, in addition to briefs, Scotusblog includes the Court's Proceedings and Orders (docket) so you can follow various steps of the case (such as, DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 8, 2016, as shown in the next illustration). It also offers you the ability to set up free e-alerts to receive updates about a particular case.

To use Scotusblog's archive, choose a Term to view the list of cases for that Term. They will be listed in sitting order, so click the link View this list sorted by case name to find your case alphabetically. Once you find the case, click on its title. Then you will see a docket sheet displaying the Proceedings and Orders, listed from oldest to newest, as shown in the above illustration. You can choose any of the briefs to view full-text.

As for posting amicus briefs quickly, neither site is quite as up-to-date as we would have hoped, but they're close. For example, on January 5, 2016, we were able to locate, on each site, an amicus brief filed just the day before (January 4, 2016), but we were unable to locate a particular one filed on the same day we were searching (January 5, 2016). By performing a Google search, we successfully located the amicus brief we were looking for - posted by a non-profit agency that was interested in the case, but not a party or one of the amicus curiae. So for very recent (same day) amicus briefs, your best bet is to Google it.

The post Update to “Dear U.S. Supreme Court Web Site: Where are Your Briefs?” appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Although you can search civil (http://linkon.in/lasupernumber) and criminal (http://linkon.in/lasupercrimdefname) case summaries (dockets) free by case number using the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s official website, searching by party name requires a fee, as shown in the fee schedule below (civil:http://linkon.in/lasupparty and criminal:http://linkon.in/lasupercrimdefname).

Even if you receive no results, you are still charged for the search.

• Per search fee for search number 1 to 10    $ 1.00
• Per search fee for search number 11 to 99    $ 4.75
• Per search fee for search number 100 to 999    $ 4.50
• Per search fee for search number 1000 to 10000    $ 4.25
• Per search fee for search number 10001 and above    $ 4.00

What You Can Do Now: Use Plainsite for Free Name Searching

Fortunately, we now have a free party name search (and also attorney and judge name) thanks to Plainsite.org (http://www.plainsite.org/courts/superior-court-of-california-county-of-los-angeles/). The results only include the docket sheet, not the case documents. The following is an announcement by Aaron Greenspan at Plainsite:

Just wanted to let you know that we have completed indexing our initial batch of Los Angeles County [civil] dockets, beginning with BC and EC. There are about 630,000 dockets available: Note that this means that you no longer need to pay Los Angeles County Superior Court to search the index by name for any BC- or EC- case before 2015. As with all dockets on PlainSite, we also recognize entity names where possible and link them together to create comprehensive profiles. Google should start picking up the pages shortly, as well.”

We tested out the site and found it fairly easy to use. We were surprised by two things: The first surprise was some of our results included dockets outside of the L.A. County Superior Court, such as dockets (and even pleadings) from the USPTO TTAB [decisions issued by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board] and some from PAIR [Patent Application Information Retrieval]. According to Greenspan, “For certain PACER filings we do have pleadings, which come largely from the RECAP browser plugin, and we have them for a lot of USPTO data as well.” The second surprise was when our party name search results also returned attorney and judge name results, until we realized that’s what Greenspan meant by “entity searches.”  However, we did have some strange results when we tested the search for a Los Angeles attorney we know. His results included USPTO dockets, but when we viewed the details his name was nowhere to be found. And, he has never practiced before the USPTO.

As to retrieving civil case documents from PlainSite for free, that’s not an option because Greenspan said, “Los Angeles County are *extremely* expensive.” He continued, “If you already have any documents you would like to share on PlainSite, you can either sign up and use the upload function that appears when you sign in, or you can e-mail documents to help@plainsite.org.” (This seems somewhat similar to the RECAP model, where you add a plug-in to your browser to automatically add every docket or document that you retrieve from PACER.)

Purchasing Civil Case Documents from the Los Angeles Superior Court Site

Because PlainSite does not include the actual case documents, you will still need to pay for civil case documents at the official Los Angeles Superior Court site (http://linkon.in/lasupdocs), searching by either a case number or a party name.   (Other pay databases might also have these case documents.) The Los Angeles Superior Court allows you to download scanned images of General Jurisdiction Civil (lawsuits greater than $25,000) Case Documents, but only from the Stanley Mosk Courthouse.  The Fee schedule is shown below.

• Civil Documents 1-5 pages per document (fee per page)    $1.00
• 6+ additional pages per document (fee per page)    $0.40
• Maximum per document    $40.00

The site states that, “Most, but not all documents filed with or generated by the Court since January, 2008 are included; additional documents, both newly-filed and previously captured, will be added on a daily basis.” On another part of the site, there is more up-to-date date range chart showing that you can search cases back much further than 2008 and not just General Jurisdiction Civil cases greater than $25,000 (http://linkon.in/lasupercivpartydatechart).

• Unlimited Civil (lawsuits greater than $25,000)
• Probate
• Family Law    1983 - Present
• Limited Civil (lawsuits $25,000 or less)    1991 - Present
• Small Claims (lawsuits $5,000 or less)    1992 - Present

Searching Criminal Cases by Name from the Los Angeles Superior Court Site

Plainsite does not offer access to Los Angeles Superior Court Site criminal cases (but does offer some federal cases). The court imposes a fee to search criminal cases by defendant name, using the Court’s online Index of Defendants in Criminal Cases (http://linkon.in/lasupercrimdefname). The search fees are the same as the civil search fees noted earlier. The Index displays a list of case numbers, filing dates, and filing locations of cases that match the defendant name you submitted.  The Index includes felony cases records from 1980 to the present and misdemeanor case records from 1988 to present, but some could go back to 1983 if any of the former Municipal Courts had automated their criminal records back to then. The Criminal Case Summary site, which can be searched for free if you know the case number (or have retrieved it from your Index search results), provides more extensive information about the case than the index, such as: case information (the count, charge section, charge statute, plea, disposition, and disposition date), events, bail, and sentencing. However, case documents are not available.

Aaron Greenspan’s Plainsite.org free name search should prove useful to researchers who need to conduct a litigation search by party, attorney, or judge name, saving them both time and some money.

The post Los Angeles Superior Court Civil Cases: Finally, Free Party Name Searching Option appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Clicking the Filter Results button opens a pop-up box that allows you to further filter your results by numerous criteria (e.g., Court Type, Court, Year Filed in the screenshot above). Clicking the plus sign next to any of the listed filters expands that filter to show the narrower filtering options

While many of the filter options seem to be the same as the column labels that we have been able to use for sorting for the past few years, one seems unique - the Party Role filter. Even though my test searches were by Party Name, it turns out the results also included attorney names. To see only party names in your results list, you can click the Filter Result tab, then click on the + sign to the left of the Party Role label (it will change to a minus sign), and then choose pla (plaintiff), dft (defendant), intv (intervenor). To see only attorney names in your results list, choose aty.

(Note that the Party Role filter does not appear for every search. In fact, the Party Role filter may be a limited test that PACER is conducting because I did not see that filter on the list that appeared in the pop-up box for any subsequent test searches.)

Who else has seen this filter?

The post Is PACER Testing New Filters in its Case Locator Search Results appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Changes to the PACER system stemming from the announcment, include:

• Allow[ing] courts, at the discretion of the presiding judge, to make digital audio recordings of court hearings available online to the public through PACER, for $2.40 per audio file.
• Adjust[ing] the Electronic Public Access fee schedule so that users are not billed unless they accrue charges of more than $10 of PACER usage in a quarterly billing cycle, in effect quadrupling the amount of data available without charge.
• Approv[ing] a pilot in up to 12 courts to publish federal district and bankruptcy court opinions via the Government Printing Office’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) so members of the public can more easily search across opinions and across courts.

Previously:

• digital audio recordings of court hearings were available to the public by ordering a CD for $26.00 per audio file.
• PACER users were not billed unless their accounts totaled at least $10 in a one-year period.

For step-by-step details on utilizing and searching FDsys, PACER and its US Party/Case Index see The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet.

Also buried in the press release is news that a "new version of the [US Party/Case Index] search tool, which includes additional search capabilities and result formats, has been developed and will be deployed under the new name PACER Case Locator this month." There is no indication if this new PACER Case Locator will encompass all courts with a unified search, or continue the holes in coverage of the existing US Party/Case Index.

The Judicial Conference is the policy-making body for the federal court system. The Chief Justice serves as its presiding officer. It is comprised of the chief judges of the 13 courts of appeals, a district judge from each of the 12 geographic circuits, and the chief judge of the Court of International Trade. The Conference meets twice a year to consider administrative and policy issues affecting the court system, and to make recommendations to Congress concerning legislation involving the Judicial Branch.

The post Judicial Conference Announces Changes to PACER appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.