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Thursday, December 06, 2007

Courts - State trial court information online

The WSJ Law Blog has just posted an interesting entry about accessing a NY trial court complaint online:

Here we were thinking how valiant we were for trudging over to the New York state courthouse to find the answer to the lawyer bride’s complaint against her florist. Valiant sure, but stupid too! Wrote one reader called “Check online, Law Blog!”:

“No idea why the Law Blog walked across Lower Manhattan to 60 Centre when the answer is available online in its entirety.

Silly Law Blog! We had no idea that you can access the docket for New York State Supreme Court cases if you have the index number.

And of course this is confusing if you don't know, or it has slipped your mind, that "Supreme Courts" in NY are trial courts.

Most state's appellate court opinions are now online. But the briefs and other appellate documents mostly are not. And at the county or trial court level, online availability of trial court opinions, especially without cost, is very rare, in the ILB's experience. The public online availability of the complaint and other filings is virtually non-existent.

But for New York! Here is the NY webpage, which provides:

WebCivil provides online access to information about cases in Civil Supreme Court in all 62 counties of New York State. You may search for cases by Index Number or the name of the Plaintiff or Defendant, look up cases by Attorney/Firm name, and view Calendars for each court. With our eTrack case tracking service you can receive email updates and appearance reminders for Civil Supreme Court cases.
The WSJ Law Blog provides the link to the answer filed in the wedding flower case.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 6, 2007 03:52 PM
Posted to Courts in general