Doxpop Cited in Interesting Article

The Doxpop service is cited in an interesting comment thread on Masson's Blog. Please visit the following link to learn more. http://tinyurl.com/lbxmd2. Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Vermillion County Records Now On Doxpop

Doxpop is pleased to announce the addition of the Vermillion County Courts as the newest local government information providers in the Doxpop community. With the addition of Vermillion County, Doxpop now provides access to Court information in 47 Indiana Counties.

The court information available for Vermillion County includes all court cases filed beginning in July of 1994. Lis Pendens and Tax Warrant cases are not available.

Vermillion and the many other counties working with Doxpop help serve the public interest by making information available via the web at no cost to the county. Doxpop provides a range of tools designed to facilitate timely and efficient communication between county agencies and those who use county data.

Doxpop has been providing public access to Indiana court records since 2002 and Indiana recorded documents since 2005. Vermillion County is the 47th court system to join the Doxpop network, which currently provides access to over 10.2 million court case records and over 2.9 million recorded documents.

How to Use "My Calendar"

Doxpop provides a calendar feature that can help organize your saved cases and any cases associated with your State Bar ID. Enabling email notifications allows you to be quickly notified whenever a change has been made to a calendar event you are associated with.

To set up your calendar:

1) From the "My Doxpop" screen, click "My Bar IDs", then click "Add New ID"
2) For "ID Type", select "State Bar Id"
3) Select the state your bar ID license is assigned.
4) Enter your Bar ID number exactly as written, including a dash or space, into the "ID number" field
5) If you wish to receive email notifications when hearings are scheduled or cancelled, select the box that says "Upcoming hearings will available in the calendar and also will be emailed to you as they are scheduled". Otherwise, select "View events in calendar only".
6) Click the "Done" button
7) You can now view your calendar by selecting the "My Calendar" link at the "My Doxpop" screen. Viewing case details from your calendar screen does not cost you a search.

Tired of checking service on a case?

Are you tired of checking service on a case? By setting an "alert" on a case, you will be notified by email every time a change occurs for that record. You choose to be notified immediately or on a daily basis.

To set an Alert on case:

1. Click on the "Court Cases" tab.
2. Type a name in the "Search by Party Name" box or a cause number in the "Search by Case ID" box and click the [Search] button.
3. If the case you want appears in the result, click the drop down arrow in the box labeled "+Add" for the case you wish to set an Alert on.
4. Select "Set Alert" by clicking on it.
5. You may continue searching and adding Alerts to cases in this manner.
6. When you are ready to see the list of your cases, click on the "my saved cases" link in the green bar near the top of the page.

The notification emails arrive at no cost to you.

The number of case alerts allowed on an account is equal to the number of searches in your plan.

Reading An Indiana Cause Number

Have you ever wondered where the numbers come from for an Indiana Cause Number? Allow us to break it down for you:

For example: 89C02-0512-IF-00016

89 is the county number (Wayne County)
C02 is the court in which the case is filed (Circuit 2)
05 is the year the case is filed (2005)
12 is the month the case is filed (December)
IF is the case type (Infraction) View a list of case type abbreviations here.
00016 is the annual sequence number. This is the 16th infraction cased of the year in Wayne County.

The annual sequence number is five digits with or without leading zeros. Some counties "pad" this number with leading zeros to make it exactly 5 digits long (see example above), while other counties leave out the leading zeros. (89C01-0512-IF-16)

When searching using Doxpop, adding the percent sign (wild card) in front of the annual sequence number ensures you a successful search result. (89C02-0512-IF-%16)

10 Million Cases!

10 Million Cases! Doxpop reached this impressive milestone early this morning. Doxpop now provides access to over 10 million cases from 138 courts in 46 Indiana counties.

We would like to thank all Doxpop partner courts, county officials, and our loyal subscribers for helping make this possible. We at Doxpop remain determined to provide you with the most valuable, accurate, and timely access to the public records you need. Keep an eye out for additional counties and service features to be added in the near future.

Fun Fact:

Assuming that each CCS is about two pages, all cases stacked on top of each other would reach approximately 5,833 feet. That's taller than 3 Sears Towers!

Thank you for using Doxpop.

Allen Criminal Records Now On Doxpop

Doxpop is pleased to announce that the Allen County Criminal Court Records are now available on Doxpop. Searches in Allen County will now include Civil and Criminal cases.

The court information available for Allen County includes all court cases filed beginning in October of 1995 and any older cases still open at that time.

Tax Warrants are filed under the MI case type and begin in November of 1995. Foreign Judgments (in and out of state) are also filed under the MI case type.

Clerk's records are complete for all civil cases. However, the Superior Courts of Allen County do not enter all actions on the electronic CCS. For a more detailed explanation of what information is available for each of the civil case types in the Allen County courts, consult this PDF chart.

Allen and the many other counties working with Doxpop help serve the public interest by making information available via the web at no cost to the county. Doxpop provides a range of tools designed to facilitate timely and efficient communication between county agencies and those who use county data.

Doxpop has been providing public access to Indiana court records since 2002 and Indiana recorded documents since 2005. The Doxpop network consists of 46 Indiana court systems and currently provides access to over 9.9 million court case records and over 2.8 million recorded documents.

Doxpop submits 798-page request for access to public information from Indiana Courts

On Friday, January 9, 2009, Doxpop shipped off its 798-page 2009 AR-9(F) request (pdf) for access to non-confidential case information in Indiana. Doxpop works with county clerks and judges to publish information about court cases on the Internet as permitted by Trial Rule 77(K) (html). Bulk access to court case information is governed by Administrative Rule 9(F) (html) and certain administrative authority under the rule is granted to the Division of State Court Administration, Lilia Judson, Executive Director.

In addition to a cover letter and a few pages of information specific to our request, the Division requires that we attach: 1) orders of consent from judges in each county from which we receive information, 2) copies of contracts with each county from which we receive information, and 3) copies of contracts with anyone to whom we provide bulk data. With about 50 counties participating in the Doxpop network, and 5 other organizations that receive bulk data via Doxpop, the paperwork adds up quickly.

But wait, there's more. There's another 4000 pages to submit before January 31. Each county that utilizes Doxpop to publish information on the Internet under TR-77(K) must also submit its own paperwork to the Division. This includes: 1) orders of consent from the judges in the county, 2) a copy of the contract with the county, and 3) detailed information about the Doxpop service and its user agreements. This adds up to about 80 pages per county. To facilitate the process, Doxpop prepares this paperwork for submission by the clerk.

It's worth noting that the consent orders and contracts in each TR-77(K) request are identical to the ones submitted by Doxpop in its AR-9(F) request. And the information about the Doxpop services is identical in each TR-77(K) request. All of this needs to be completed between January 1 and January 31: new consent orders from the judges, new AR-9(F) request from Doxpop, approval by the Division of Doxpop's request, and new TR-77(K) requests by each clerk. All of this at a busy time of year, especially for judges and clerks who just took office.

As you can see from the cover letter, Doxpop has some concerns about how the Division has chosen to interpret the rules. I'll say more about that in upcoming blog entries. For now I'll suggest that the current process is poorly designed, at best, or designed to frustrate clerks, judges, and counties who have not switched to the state-provided case management system, at worst. In the letter sent to clerks last year (pdf), the second paragraph seems to imply the latter.

Of course we comply with the process prescribed by the Division, but surely there's a better way.

Ray

Kosciusko Recorded Documents Join Doxpop

Doxpop is pleased to welcome the Kosciusko County Recorder as the newest local government information provider in the Doxpop community.

The Kosciusko County document index extends back to January of 1991 and the Kosciusko County document images extend back to January of 1997.

Kosciusko and the many other counties working with Doxpop help serve the public interest by making information available via the web at no cost to the county. Doxpop provides a range of tools designed to facilitate timely and efficient communication between county agencies and those who use county data.

Doxpop has been providing public access to Indiana court records since 2002 and Indiana recorded documents since 2005. Kosciusko County is the 7th Recorder's office to join the Doxpop network, which currently provides access to over 9.0 million court case records and over 2.8 million recorded documents.

The Cost of Free Goes Higher.

A bit of irony: Exactly one week after I posted the accumulated cost of the system that supports "free" access to court information in Indiana, we have received word from a representative of the Association of Indiana Counties that the Court's proposal to the Indiana State Budget Committee this morning includes a request for a 42% increase in the Court Record Automation Fee. (Pull out your calculators and look at my last post to see how much that adds to the cost of "free".)

Oddly, that's not even the most interesting aspect of the proposal. It sounds like they're proposing eliminating elected clerks. I'll try to obtain a copy of the proposal and post it here along with more thorough analysis when it becomes available. Until then, here's a quote with the highlights:

"Today the Supreme Court announced their budget proposal to the State Budget Committee. The proposal included the appointment of clerks by the state, probation fees absorbed by the state, and a $7-10 fee increase for the JTAC Odyssey system."

Update: I have now obtained a partial copy of the budget proposal. Many pages are missing, so I'll wait until I have a clean copy to post it. Here are a few figures:

On page 12, the proposal requests that the automated record keeping fee "be increased by $3 to $10 per case filed, effective July 1, 2009."

The bottom line on the entire budget is that the Court intends to increase its spending overall from an estimated $136,180,673 in FY '08-'09 to $164,133,297 in FY'09-'10. An increase of roughly 28 million dollars. Since they expect less of this to be funded by "dedicated" funds, this will translate to about $32.7 million more out of State "general" (tax) funds.