We are frequently asked if the electronic service provided by the e-filing system can (or should) be used to serve special judges with documents as required by Trial Rule 5(A).
The short answer is No. You must continue to serve documents for special judges conventionally.
The longer answer is that the Court has decided that judges will not be included in the public service contact list, and so there is no correct way to use the e-filing system to provide service.
We have heard reports that some law firms have tried to get around this limitation by creating a private service contact in their firm account with the judge's email address and use that contact to transmit all e-filed documents electronically. This is considered improper, so please don't do it.
On September 1, a change to the appellate rules will require that appeals be initiated via e-filing. Here is some guidance on how to handle electronic service when filing an appeal:
When you use the Doxpop system for initiating trial court cases, we limit you to attaching one service contact during that process. However when initiating an appellate case, you may attach any number of service contacts in order to comply with the appellate rules.
The list of the people/organizations you must serve when initiating an appeal has not changed, and can be found in the Appellate Rule 24. What has changed with E-Filing is that you can now serve some of these people or organizations electronically by attaching them to the case when you file the notice of appeal.
When filing a Notice of Appeal, here are some of the people or organizations you may need to serve, and methods of attaching them when it is possible:
For represented parties, you will be able to find their counsel using the public service directory and attach them for e-service.
You will need to be sure that if required, the parties themselves are notified conventionally, as they will not have public service contacts.
The Judge, Clerk and Court Reporter on the original trial court case do not have public service contacts, so these three people will need to be served conventionally. (This also holds true for judges and hearing officers in connection with cases coming from administrative courts.)
If the case is criminal, you will always be able to serve the prosecuting attorney via e-service, using the public service contact for the attorney that most recently entered an appearance on behalf of the State. (This may not always be the current prosecuting attorney.)
If the case is criminal, you will also be required to serve the Attorney General. To accomplish this, you can attach the public service contact of the currently serving Attorney General. eg: Curtis Hill.
For expedited appeals involving children, you have a longer list found in Appellate Rule 14.1. You may find that some of those can be notified via e-service. For instance, county commissioners may have currently retained counsel that will appear on the public service contact list. Some attorneys also serve as a CASA or guardian ad litem, and thus may have public service contacts. However, most of the service in this type of appeal will have to be done conventionally.
When you put together your certificate of service, for anyone whose service contact was attached at the time of filing the notice of appeal, note that they were served via "IEFS" with the date of filing.
On rare occasions, an email problem may prevent e-service from occurring, so remember keep an eye out for any service failure notices, which will arrive via email.
Here's a peek at what this section of the filing screen for a Notice of Appeal looks like:
On Friday, August 10th Warrick County joined the list of counties in the e-file system.
This is just a reminder that if you have open cases in any of these courts now is the time to use our batch service contact attachment feature to get your preferred service contact attached to all your cases. In addition to finding your Lawrence county cases, this will catch any other open cases you may not have your private service contact attached to yet in any e-filing county.
Last week, Doxpop added new tools for management of service contacts in batches to our e-filing account administration screen.
The first tool allows you to attach the service contact you specify to every open (pending) case where you or the attorney you work for is an attorney of record. This tool is important for two reasons:
Currently, when each county begins e-filing, none of your old (pre-e-filing) cases for that county will have your service contact attached. It is a hassle to attach those contacts manually, so our tools will allow you to automatically attach the service contact you specify to every case where you (or the attorney you work for) is the attorney of record for an open (pending) case. This lets you hit the ground running in every county.
At the first of the year, Trial Court Technology has notified us that they intend to do away with public contacts managed by private firms. The only public contacts will be one for each attorney created based on the information found in the roll of attorneys. This change means that if you want to control how e-service occurs for your cases, you will need to make sure you attached your preferred private contact (that you control) before another person attaches the public contact that you don't control.
The second two tools allow you to detach a service contact from all cases where it appears, or replace a service contact with a new one. This is useful in situations where an attorney is closing up shop or moving to a new firm.
We'll post more guidance soon about the change in public/private service contacts that will occur on January 1. In the meantime, take a look at these new tools, and in particular, start using the first tool to make your work easier as each new county comes online.
Our support staff has put together a brief (under 3 minute) video to demonstrate how these tools work:
And here is where you will find the new tools:
Please don't hesitate to give us a call at 866-369-7671 or email support@doxpop.com if you have questions about how to use these new tools.
If you want to make sure you never miss an important blog post, please subscribe using the "Follow By Email" tool found near the top on the right side of this blog.
Comments are moderated to prevent spam and offensive content. We *are* interested in your thoughts and will post and reply to comments when time allows, but there may be a delay due to the necessity to moderate comments. You can also just email support@doxpop.com if you'd like to start an immediate conversation about anything you read here.
Nothing on this blog is legal advice
From time to time we post information designed to help our users who are attorneys interact with the courts from a business process perspective. Doxpop is not a legal firm, and none of these practical tips should be construed as legal advice. If you are an attorney, we hope this information is helpful in running your business. If you are not an attorney and are involved in a court case, the best advice we can give you is to seek competent legal counsel.
About Us
Doxpop is an Indiana company that provides court e-filing services and works with local and state officials to aggregate public information from every Indiana county, and two counties in Michigan, into a single public database. We seek solutions that provide easy access for all without creating a publicly funded subsidy for the businesses that use public information professionally.
The paradox of insular language
-
We often develop slang or codewords to keep the others from understanding
what we’re saying. Here’s an example (thanks BK) of the lengths that some
are goi...
