Electronic public access services have rapidly expanded throughout the federal judiciary in the past few years. The public demand for these services has increased, both in terms of the number of registrants and the amount of actual usage. Several hundred registrants regularly review large numbers of cases in many jurisdictions. Some of these registrants, in particular organizations tracking regional or national bankruptcy, civil or criminal litigation have requested more efficient methods to retrieve case information from multiple court jurisdictions. In response to this need, the Judiciary has created the U.S. Party/Case Index.

The U.S. Party/Case Index is a national index for U.S. district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts. A small subset of information from each case is transferred to the U.S. Party/Case Index server each night located in San Antonio, Texas at the PACER Service Center. The system serves as a locator index for PACER. You may conduct nationwide searches to determine whether or not a party is involved in federal litigation.

Not all federal courts participate in the U.S. Party/Case Index. The non-participating courts are listed under the "Courts not on Index" option on the web main menu. These courts do not have data available on the U.S. Party/Case Index. For a complete nationwide search, those courts need to be searched individually. The list of non-participating courts found on this site is updated nightly.

The U.S. Party/Case Index will allow you to search nationwide by name or social security number in the bankruptcy index, name or nature of suit in the civil index, defendant name in the criminal index, and party name in the appellate index. Each hit produced from your searches will give you the party name, the court where the case is filed, the case number, and the filing date. In addition, for bankruptcy searches you will receive the chapter and for civil searches you will receive the nature of suit.

You must access the U.S. Party/Case Index with a valid login and password issued by the PACER Service Center.

To access the U.S. Party/Case Index, follow the steps described below.

1. The World Wide Web Address for the U.S. Party/Case Index is http://pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov .
   
   
2. Once you have connected to this site, click on "Enter U.S. Party Case Index." From here, log on using the assigned login and password.
   
   You have the option of specifying a client code on the login screen. This is a thirty two character text field you may use to track your sessions in order to charge them back to a client. The client code you enter upon login will appear on your quarterly statement. You can change this at anytime during your session by selecting the 'Change Client Code' option.
   
   It is important to note that you will be unable to bookmark any page past the login form, as login verification is required each time you visit this site.
   
   
3. The main menu will appear, click the appropriate option.
   
   
4. For searches you must enter at least Party Name, a Case Number, or a Nature of Suit Code. Other fields are optional and are provided to limit your search. Form instructions and help are available on each online form.
   
   
5. If the criteria you have searched produced any hits, the data will be displayed one page at a time. An option is available to download the entire search results as a text or zip file.
   
   The Court field in the output is a link to the court's PACER web site.
   
   The Case Number field in the output will be a direct link to the full case information on the court's PACER machine.
   
   A receipt is displayed at the bottom of the screen indicating the number of billable pages and cost for the data on the current viewable web page only. It does not include the cost for any previously viewed pages.
   
   
6. When you are finished searching, you should select the Logout option.
   
   

To retrieve more information on a particular case found while searching the U.S. Party/Case Index, access the PACER system for the jurisdiction where the case resides. This is indicated by the court abbreviation provided with each hit on the U.S. Party/Case Index. For most hits on U.S. Party/Case Index, the Case Number will be a link to the case summary information at that court's PACER site. All you need to do is click the case number.

Links to courts with PACER data is available at this site.

The U.S. Party/Case Index is available 24 hours a day including weekends.

The United States Congress has given the Judicial Conference of the United States, the judicial governing body of the U.S. Federal Courts, authority to impose user fees for electronic access to case information. All registered agencies or individuals will be charged an access fee of $.08 per page.

You will be billed on a quarterly basis for your transactions. You will be allowed to enter a client code of your choosing each time you login to PACER to help facilitate managing the costs. The client code you enter will appear for each transaction on your quarterly statement.

To register, fill out one of the registration forms available on this site.