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Introduction
Electronic public access services have rapidly expanded throughout
the federal judiciary in the past few years. The public demand for
these services has increased, both in terms of the number of
registrants and the amount of actual usage. Several
hundred registrants regularly review large numbers of cases in many
jurisdictions. Some of these registrants, in particular
organizations tracking regional or national bankruptcy, civil or
criminal litigation have requested more efficient methods to
retrieve case information from multiple court jurisdictions. In
response to this need, the Judiciary has created the U.S. Party/Case
Index.
What is the U.S. Party Case Index?
The U.S. Party/Case Index is a national index for U.S. district,
bankruptcy, and appellate courts. A small subset of information
from each case is transferred to the U.S. Party/Case Index server
each night located in San Antonio, Texas at the PACER Service
Center. The system serves as a locator index for PACER. You may
conduct nationwide searches to determine whether or not a party is
involved in federal litigation.
Are All Courts Available on the U.S. Party/Case Index?
Not all federal courts participate in the
U.S. Party/Case Index. The
non-particpating courts
are listed under the "Courts not on Index" option on the web
main menu. These courts do not have data
available on the U.S. Party/Case Index. For a complete nationwide
search, those courts need to be searched individually. The
list of non-particpating courts
found on this site is updated nightly.
Types of Searches
The U.S. Party/Case Index will allow you to search nationwide by
name or social security number in the bankruptcy index, name or
nature of suit in the civil index,
defendant name in the criminal index, and party name in the
appellate index. Each hit produced from your searches will give
you the party name, the court where the case is filed, the case
number, and the filing date. In addition, for bankruptcy searches
you will receive the chapter and for civil searches you will
receive the nature of suit.
How to Access the U.S. Party Case Index?
You must access the U.S. Party/Case Index with a valid login
and password issued by the PACER Service Center.
To access the U.S. Party/Case Index, follow the steps described below.
- The World Wide Web Address for the Internet version
of the U.S. Party/Case Index is
http://pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov .
- Once you have connected to this site, click on
"Enter U.S. Party Case Index." From here,
log on using the assigned login and password.
You have the option of specifying a client code on
the login screen. This is a thirty two character text
field you may use to track your sessions in order to
charge them back to a client. The client code you enter
upon login will appear on your quarterly statement.
You can change this at anytime during your session by
selecting the 'Change Client Code' option.
It is important to note that you will be unable to
bookmark any page past the login form, as login
verification is required each time you visit this
site.
- The main menu will appear, click the appropriate option.
- For searches you must enter at least Party Name, a
Case Number, or a Nature of Suit Code. Other fields
are optional and are provided to limit your search.
Form instructions and help are available on each
online form.
- If the criteria you have searched produced any hits,
the data will be displayed one page at a time. An
option is available to download the entire search
results as a text or zip file.
The Court field in the output is a link to the PACER
modem number for that court or the court's PACER web
site, if the court is available on the Internet.
The Case Number field in the output will be a direct
link to the full case information on the court's
PACER machine, if the court is running the Internet
version of PACER.
A receipt is displayed
at the bottom of the screen indicating the number
of billable pages and cost for the data on the current
viewable web page only. It does not include the cost
for any previously viewed pages.
- When you are finished searching, you should select the
Logout option.
How Do I Get More Information on Each Case?
To retrieve more information on a particular case found while
searching the U.S. Party/Case
Index, access the PACER system for the jurisdiction where
the case resides. This is indicated by the court abbreviation
provided with each hit on the U.S. Party/Case Index. For most hits
on U.S. Party/Case Index, the Case Number will be a link to the
case summary information at that court's PACER site.
All you need to do is click the case number.
Links to courts with
PACER data available on the Internet and a the most current list
of PACER modem numbers to the
individual PACER systems is available at this site.
Availability
The U.S. Party/Case Index is available 24 hours a day including
weekends.
Cost
The United States Congress has given the Judicial Conference of the
United States, the judicial governing body of the U.S. Federal
Courts, authority to impose user fees for electronic access to case
information. All registered agencies or individuals will be charged
an access fee of $.07 per page.
You will be billed on a quarterly basis for your transactions. You
will be allowed to enter a client code of your choosing each time
you login to PACER to help facilitate managing the costs. The
client code you enter will appear for each transaction on your
quarterly statement.
To Register
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To register, fill out one of the registration
forms available on this site.
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