Summer 2006
On-Line Access to Court Records Tested In Two Counties
TWO PILOT PROJECTS ARE ABOUT TO
get underway to explore the technological,
operational and privacy
issues raised by public access to
court files on the Internet.
| Each pilot will yield important
lessons as to how New York’s 62
counties will eventually move
to on-line access to court records. |
Chosen for their different demographics,
New York and Broome
counties have been designated as
pilot sites for putting court records
on-line. The pilots differ in scope and
approach. One county is a
world financial capital with
approximately 50,000 new
Supreme Court civil case
filings a year, including
highly complex commercial
matters.
The other is
an upstate county with a population
of just over 200,000 and fewer than
2,000 new civil filings each year. Each
pilot will yield important lessons as
to how New York’s 62 counties will
eventually move to on-line access to
court records.
The pilots are an outgrowth of the
recommendations of the Commission
on Public Access to Court Records,
whose 2004 report (www.nycourts.gov/ip/publicaccess/) concluded
that “the rules and conditions of
public access to court case records
should be the same whether those
records are made available in paper
form at the courthouse or electronically
over the Internet.” Turning this
premise into reality presents challenges
to both large and small counties.
The New York County Pilot
The New York County Supreme Court,
Civil Branch, is an ideal pilot location
because of its significant experience in
scanning and posting decisions and
orders to the Internet, begun in 1997-98. County Clerk Norman Goodman,
a member of the Commission on Public
Access to Court Records, began scanning
judgments in 1999 and pleadings
in 2004. Together, they scan approximately
98,000 documents annually.
These documents are available electronically
to judges and court and
county clerk personnel through Supreme
Court Records On-Line Library
(SCROLL), a computer application
developed by Associate LAN (Local
Area Network) Administrator Reginald
Bouchereau of the court’s Management
Information Services office, with
Statewide Coordinator of Electronic
Filing Jeffrey Carucci’s assistance on
design and format.
SCROLL also provides — all from
a single point of entry — access to the
county clerk’s minute books (a record
of all filings in that office) and the
court’s case-management information.
SCROLL allows judges and court
personnel to review a pleading or prior
decision, look up the next scheduled
appearance or obtain other case
information without requisitioning
the physical case file.
As part of the pilot, which begins
in September, two significant changes
to this system are being implemented.
First, SCROLL is being made
available to the public through the
Unified Court System (UCS) Web
site. Second, scanned documents
will include preliminary conference
and other case-management orders,
requests for judicial intervention,
notes of issue, orders to show cause
and notices of motion. Due to volume, affidavits,
exhibits and other supporting motion
papers will not be scanned.
As a result, attorneys and members
of the public will have remote access to
a “virtual” file of the court’s civil cases.
Access will be without fee or the need
for a password or other identification.
Decisions and orders in matrimonial
and Mental Hygiene Law Article
81 guardianship cases will not be
posted to the Internet, nor, of course,
will decisions and orders where the
case file or a portion thereof has been
sealed by court order.
To protect privacy interests relating
to scanned documents, the court has
provided guidelines for litigants and
attorneys, cautioning them to omit personal
information, such as Social Security
numbers, names of minor children
and financial account numbers, from
court filings. There is also a mechanism
for requesting that a court record be
kept off the Internet for good cause.
“We believe this project will transform
the ancient, traditional route of
access to our court records, which for
centuries has required a trip to our
county clerk’s office,” the court’s First
Deputy Chief Clerk Robert C. Meade,
Esq., said. “We are, for the first time,
making a vast volume of our records
accessible on the Internet. Attorneys
will have access to a wealth of information
about their cases without leaving
their offices. We are also enhancing
general public awareness of the workings
of our system of justice.”
The Broome County Pilot
Broome County’s public-access pilot
gets underway this summer. This
pilot also will pull information from
Supreme and County Courts and the
county clerk and make it available
electronically to the public along with
scanned images of documents in the
court file.
While Broome County has fewer filings,
its pilot goes beyond the New York
County project in two respects. First, it
includes criminal records as well as civil
records. Criminal case records (except
information already not public) will be
available to the public over the Internet
once the case is resolved at the trial level.
Second, the entire file in civil cases,
including supporting motion papers,
will be scanned and made available.
Case information and records will
be available initially through the county
clerk’s Web site (www.gobroomecounty.com/clerk or www.gobcclerk.com). It will eventually be available
through the UCS Web site as well.
Unlike the New York County pilot,
attorneys and members of the public
will need an account and password to
access court records.
In addition to providing Internet
access, the Broome project seeks to
reduce duplicate data-entry and
increase efficiency by allowing data-sharing
between the courts and the
county clerk’s office. Their respective
staff will be able to take advantage of
internal electronic access to records
and case information, reducing the
need to send paper records back and
forth between chambers and the county
clerk’s office. This will be especially
helpful for those judges whose chambers
are located outside the county.
Guidelines for litigants and attorneys
regarding preparation of documents
and exclusion of sensitive
information will be similar to those of
the New York County project. “There’s
a good deal of work going on in terms
of redacting information that should
not be released to the public, and
that’s a work in progress,” according
to Michael P. Husar, Chief Clerk of
Broome’s Supreme and County Courts.
The project will be governed by formal
rules established by administrative
order. Representatives from the
county’s civil and criminal bar have
participated in the development of the
project and its guidelines.
Deputy Chief Administrative Judge
for Court Operations and Planning
Judy Harris Kluger and OCA Chief of
Operations Ron Younkins are overseeing
the implementation of the court
system’s efforts to provide public
access to court records on-line.
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