How do I find information or timeline about a court case?
Dockets Overview/ Page/ Update Case - Watch Video
What is a docket? When a state trial court case is filed, the court assigns it a docket number, which is the court’s case number or tracking number that may be used to find the docket. A case docket is a formal record in which the court lists all of the historical / pending hearings, events and filings in a court case. Think of the docket as a timeline of events in a case. The docket lists the judge, parties, attorneys of record, as well as every document filed in the case and the dates they were filed. Every county in every state has a different website to access court dockets.
The Trellis Database aggregates state trial court dockets from trial courts all over the country and makes them searchable and accessible from a single interface. The text of these dockets are searchable on Trellis, The text of these dockets are not searchable from a county court website. On a county court website, you must know a case number before searching for the case. This means that on Trellis, you can find information that you would never know existed if you only searched by case number on the county court website!
On Trellis, you may access these Dockets by running a search query using our Smart Search function. Smart Search will search the text of state trial court Dockets and return results based on your search query.
What you’ll find on a Trellis Docket page is similar to what you would find on the county court docket, but easier to navigate and enhanced with additional information.
🔎 Remember, the Dockets search results tab only searches terms that appear on the case’s public docket. If the relevant search terms are included within a specific case’s documents, but not listed in the text of the case’s docket entries, the case will not be listed within the Dockets tab of the query’s search results.
If you want to find cases where your search terms may be found in case documents or judicial rulings, you will want to switch to the Rulings or Documents search results tab.