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Whenever investigating an
individual or business, one of the most basic checks is
for lawsuits, criminal charges, and bankruptcy filings.
But how do you research the court system? Is there one
simple site to go to where you pop in a name and are
rewarded with a listing of all court filings across the
country pertaining to that individual? No such luck ...
yet, anyway! To understand court research, you first need
to understand a bit about the USA's court system.
There are two major
separate court entities in the USA, the State court system
and the Federal court system. The Federal court system is
divided into three branches, the federal criminal, civil,
bankruptcy, and appeals courts. These courts are not
'single entities' -- there are a number of federal courts
scattered across the United States, each covering a
certain geographic district within a 'circuit'. For a map
of the circuits, see www.uscourts.gov/images/CircuitMap.pdf.
For example, there is a Northern Mississippi district
court, as well as a Southern. Cases are prosecuted by US
Attorneys, who are elected, or Assistant US Attorneys, who
are government employees. Regarding federal law, federal
statutes are divided into sections called Titles. Title
11, for example, deals with bankcruptcy, and under that
Title you will find Chapters, such as Chapter 7 regarding
liquidation of a business. All personal and business
bankruptcies fall under federal statutes and are dealt
with in federal court, and bankruptcies make up nearly 70%
of all federal court cases. This makes researching whether
an individual has a history of bankcruptcy a considerably
simpler matter, since only the relevant federal court
needs to be searched. Title 18 contains the majority of
the criminal statutes for the federal criminal court. Note
that in many cases it can be decided for an individual to
be tried in the federal rather than State court system,
under federal-question jurisdiction rules, for a variety
of reasons. For example, in a recent case where two teens
burned a cross in a black family's yard, it was decided to
prosecute them in federal rather than State court -- the
penalties that could be imposed by the federal court
system were greater. Likewise, cases involving citizens
from different States will be tried in Federal courts if
the monetary amount involved in the case is greater than
$75,000. There are a number of other types of cases that
are likewise defaulted to federal court, including cases
involving patents or copyrights, cases challenging State
laws (usually for Constitutional reasons), and cases
involving federal agencies.
The State court system is
somewhat more complex in its terminology, since this
terminology differs from State to State, but in the end
the terminology resolves into a system of 'upper' and
'lower' courts in civil and criminal matters. The State
civil court was an 'upper' and 'lower' court, as does the
State criminal court. In some States, these are referred
to as the 'supreme' and 'county' courts, or the 'superior'
and 'justice' courts. The upper courts tend to deal with
more important subjects, or crimes with stiffer penalties
(such as armed robbery, cases of gross malpractice, and
often divorce). Lower courts will deal with misdemeanor
crimes and small money claims (ie, small claims court). In
criminal cases of all sorts, the prosecutor is usually the
United States government (from the State's attorney
office), and the case will be lised as The State of
Wherever V. Lastname. Upper and lower courts are
relatively simple to understand -- big money cases or
cases involving serious crimes go the upper, and
everything of lesser importance to the lower, but don't
forget that most divorces are tried in the upper court!
Unfortunately, the State court system doesn't stop there,
but also includes, depending on the State, a variety of
other courts such as the municipal court or traffic court,
which handle matters specific to their speciality (ie,
argue traffic tickets in traffic court). There are also
appellate courts, for dealing with appeals.
So, now that we understand
the court system a bit better, how do we go about finding
court records? For Federal courts, this is a relatively
simple matter: The majority of records are accessible
through a system called PACER (Public Access to Court
Electronic Records). PACER allows searching different
courts by a variety of fields, including name. You as a
citizen can sign up for PACER with a credit card at http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
-- the service isn't free, but only charges a few dollars
for good documentation on most cases. Note that some
districts still aren't in the PACER system (for example,
the Alaska district court) -- in this case, you can always
pay a visit to the nearest district federal courthouse.
Every district has one, and the records should be open to
the public for free. Feel free to drive there and peruse!
If the district court is further than you want to travel,
there are courthouse researchers across the country who
make a living looking up court records for those to far
away from the court to visit in person.
State records are somewhat
more complex. To access these records over the Internet,
not only should the State records be online, but also the
individual county in question. Most State higher court and
appellate courts are online with free searching, but many
lower (county) courts are not, only offer some records, or
charge high fees. Of course, if you're only interested in
researching cases in your area, all you need to do is
drive to your local county courthouse, where the records
are, by Federal law, public access. Your county courthouse
should not charge you a fee to access these records, they
should be free to peruse. Charging a fee online is for
'electronic access', not for seeing the actual documents
themselves. Once again, if the county is outside your area
you can hire a courtresearcher to do the job for you. To
find county court researches and county/State courts on
the Internet, simply do a search engine search for
'Countyname county court', and follow the links from
there.
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About
The Author
Matthew
Abts is an x-military private investigator
specializing in background investigations
and judicial claims processing.
A
Cup of Tea, Coffee, or Something Else www.quiettable.com |
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