How do I find out where a Federal Court case was filed?
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: I’ll assume you’re talking about a case introduced in a federal district court, where trial-level cases are heard, as opposed to an appellate court or the US Supreme Court. You might be able to get this information from the PACER service of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which is their system to allow electronic access to federal court records: http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/. There’s a fee for using the system, although the Duke Law Library has a login/password for the use of law students and faculty. If you had some idea of the location, you can go to the web site for that particular district: http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html. Some of the districts may have free information regarding what cases have been filed, a calendar of upcoming hearings, etc. There’s also a county look-up tool to determine which federal district a county is in, if that’s your question: http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/lookup.html Once there’s been an opinion in the case, it may or may not get published in the standard reporters (the Federal Supplement for federal cases at the district level). You may still need to contact the district court directly. I’d suggest starting in the law library for specialized help in this area.