There are only websites of court opinions if the respective courts have decided
to make their opinions available in electronic form, via BBS or directly on the
Internet.
Almost all United States District Courts do not make their full opinions
available electronically, notwithstanding that the courts have almost all, if
not all, of those opinions in electronic format.
If you believe that this is inappropriate, you may communicate with the Chief
Judge:
The Honorable John Garrett Penn
Chief Judge
United States District Court District of Columbia
3rd & Constitution Avenue
Washington, DC 20001
The Clerk of the Court is:
Nancy Mayer-Whittington
It is also interesting to note that one Judge in that District Court, The
Honorable Judith Kessler, in a recent opinion in favor of West Publishing
Company, in dicta stated:
"And as Defendants [West and US Department of Justice] properly point out, the
public may still obtain public-domain material -- i.e., non-West formatted
material -- from the government directly for nominal copying costs (e.g.
through the clerk's office in a courthouse). The public may also obtain this
material free from libraries."
So, you could always check out the New York City Public Library for this easily
obtained public domain material, or failing that, take the Metroliner to
Washington and pick it up which will only set you back $110 each way. The
Courthouse is close to the train station and the cherry blossoms will be out
soon. Perhaps Judge Kessler's law clerk may even be happy to help you out.
You are lucky that you only need a recent opinion ... otherwise you would have
to go to the Federal Records Center in Suitland, Maryland, after you first go
the the DC Court and obtain the document's accession number.
Since you do not have the opinion's date, you will first have to obtain the
information from the docket sheet. Maybe the docket sheet is on Pacer. But,
that will mean your firm has to have a Pacer account, and has set it up and
used it for the DC Court in the last 6 months (if you do not use it every six
months, then your account is terminated). If you have a Pacer account, but no
authorization for that court, you will have to call the Pacer Service Center
and wait 24 hours if you are lucky.
If you have this information (the document's number on the docket sheet) then
there are document retrieval services in Washington that will go to the court
and track the opinion down for you. Otherwise, the document service first
would have to obtain and fax the docket sheet to you and then go back and
obtain the opinion after you identify it.
Or you could write a letter to the clerk and hope to get the opinion back in
time. Some court's require that you prepay and other take VISA. The only way
to prepay if that is required is if someone in the clerk's office first locates
the document and counts the pages and telephones you with the charge. The
copying charge is only 5 times what Kinko's charges. Some clerk's office will
not accept check's that are not in the exact amount.
When all is said and done, and if you include your time cost as well as outside
costs, it will only cost your firm a couple of hundred dollars, but judging
from the case you want, that should not be a big deal.
If the DC Court bothered to place the electronic version of all of its opinion
files on an Internet FTP site ... at a cost of $100 or so a month to the Court
for the typical Internet service provider, you might even have the opinion by
now.
If you do decide to take the Metroliner to Washington, when you come out of
Union Station, just over to the left is this magnificent sparkling building
which is the headquarters of the Administrative Office of the United States
Courts. It is an enormous building. Perhaps you could walk over there and see
what they are doing about the issue of electronic access to federal district
court opinions.
You see, the people in the Adminstrative Office (AO) say that the courts can do
this if they wish, but the people in the district courts say they need the
permission of the Administrative Office. So, maybe you could drop into the AO
headquarter and ask Ralph Mecham who runs the AO to walk over to the court with
you. Friday should be a nice day. And then you and Ralph could perhaps drop in
on the Chief Judge and Clerk at the DC Court and maybe get this all resolved
before the cherry blossoms come out.
I wonder if Al Gore could reinvent this process somehow. He's pretty good at
ashtrays and this hopefully would not be too much of a challenge.
Alan
<---- Begin Included Message ---->
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 18:51:28 GMT
From: gjallen@usa.pipeline.com (Gloria J. Allen/Huber Lawrence & Abell)
Reply-To: gjallen@usa.pipeline.com
Sender: owner-law-lib@ucdavis.edu
Subject: U.S Dist DC
To: gjallen@usa.pipeline.com
Hi to one and all
I am looking for a ruling in The Unites States District Court for the
District of Columbia. The attorney (of Course) needs this immediately.
The cite I have is as follows: Niagara Mohawk Power Corp v United States
Dep't of Energy Civ. Act. No. 95-0952.
I've checked Westlaw and Lexis and tried on the Net. Are there Websites
for the US district courts?? Any suggestions will be muchly appreciated.
Thanks
Sarah Jacobson
gjallen@usa.pipeline.com
(212) 455-5557
Huber Lawrence & Abell
New York, NY
<---- End Included Message ---->
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Alan D. Sugarman Federal Appeals on Disc tm CD-ROM ::
President Opinions of US Courts of Appeals ::
1993 to Date - All Circuits ::
HyperLaw, Inc. ® ::
P.O. Box 1176 DO NOT SHORT CIRCUIT YOUR CLIENTS ::
New York, NY 10023 ::
sugarman@hyperlaw.com 212-787-2812 212-496-4138(fax) ::
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