Senator demands US courts recover 10 years of online public records

by Joe Mullin – Aug 26, 2014 9:45 pm UTC
US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta.

The Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) has removed access to nearly a decade’s worth of electronic documents from four US appeals courts and one bankruptcy court.

The removal is part of an upgrade to a new computer system for the database known as Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER.

Court dockets and documents at the US Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 7th, 11th, and Federal Circuits, as well as the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, were maintained with “locally developed legacy case management systems,” said AO spokesperson Karen Redmond in an e-mailed statement. Those five courts aren’t compatible with the new PACER system.

“The dockets and documents in these cases can be obtained directly from the relevant court,” said Redmond. “All open cases, as well as any new filings, will continue to be available on PACER.”

If you’re wondering if “obtained directly” means “obtained in person,” the answer is yes. The AO thinks public access has been maintained because an interested party can physically go to the relevant federal courthouses in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC and request the historical documents. The 2nd Circuit is apparently amenable to e-mail requests as well.

There won’t be any other courts affected, said Redmond, since only five courts were using the locally developed systems that caused problems.

The most heavily affected court will be the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which handles all patent appeals as well as certain other types of cases, like veterans’ claims. The Federal Circuit has lost all cases filed prior to March 1, 2012. The 2nd Circuit and 11th Circuit will stop providing access to cases filed before 2010.

It’s hardly ancient history. That means the docket in a case as relevant as the 2008 Cablevision lawsuit—which legalized remote DVRs and was the basis of Aereo’s ill-fated copyright battle with the networks—has been deleted.

PACER has long been criticized as a deeply dated system that already does too little and charges too much for access to things like judicial orders that are important public documents. Its inefficiency spawned a project called RECAP, which worked with the Internet Archive to make PACER documents available for free, instead of the 10 cents per page PACER charges.