Occasionally when submitting a new case or subsequent filing on an existing case, you may run into the issue that the lead document, and more often attachments, are in a format that the courts can not or will not accept, causing your filing to be rejected. These rejections often provide little to no information as to why the document may have been rejected or failed.
Though there can be a number of things that could cause this, one of the more common issues we run into, is the formatting of the documents. The Indiana Court System is a bit particular in regards to what type of documents it will accept:
* 50MB is the size limit of any individual document.
* 75MB is the total size allowed for the entire envelope.
* The maximum number of pages can not exceed 250 pages.
* Some fonts are not acceptable within the PDF document. (See examples below.)
Since getting a filing rejected may seem a bit arbitrary, and often the rejection message can lack the exact cause of it not being accepted, we wanted to provide a few points and tips to make this process go smoothly, at least in relation to the documents and attachments that you include in your filings.
#1 A good general rule of thumb is: If you (the submitter) did not create the lead or supporting documents in your filing, then you'll likely benefit from using a “Print to PDF function” to recreate the document(s) before submitting them. This process will often increase the size of the document, but helps by rendering unusual fonts as an image.
This is easily done by selecting the document(s), choosing the “print” option that should be available in the PDF viewing software you are using or familiar with, but instead of printing to a printer, use the drop down to select “Print to PDF”. This will create a “copy” of the original document, which you can then attach to your filing. Doing this will often fix any potential issues with the actual document, especially if you have run into the rejection wall, but are not sure why.
In general, this technique is used for attachments, since those are documents created by others, and hence must be rendered exactly, even if they include fonts unacceptable to the courts. On the other hand, lead documents will almost always be your own work, so in that case, you should just use the correct fonts (see below.) This technique can be used to fix up depositions that are created by specialized software using unusual fonts.
#2 The Indiana Court System will only accept certain fonts in submitted documents. If your document(s) do not use one of the fonts listed below, your documents may not be accepted:
Arial
Baskerville
Book Antiqua
Bookman
Bookman Old Style
Century
Century Schoolbook
Calisto MT
CG Times
Garamond
Georgia
New Baskerville
New Century Schoolbook
Palatino
Times New Roman
#3 Lastly, the Indiana Court System has published an E-filing guide which can be very helpful in ensuring your filings will be accepted. The E-Filing Guide provides a detailed explanation of the types and formats of documents that are allowed (and prohibited) to be submitted. Please see pages 21 - 24 at the link below:
https://www.in.gov/courts/files/efiling-user-guide.pdf
The guide also provides instructions, if you need to submit something to the court that cannot be converted to PDF format.
