⚖️ Court Records Search — Public Case Data

Pull public U.S. court records — opinions and federal RECAP dockets together — from a single query, without a PACER login or per-page fee. Court Records Search runs your case-name, party, or keyword across CourtListener's opinions and RECAP archives in one pass, returning case name, court, filing date, docket number, nature of suit, judge, and a direct link. It is the broad on-ramp for KYC, background diligence, and compliance teams who need a fast public-record sweep before drilling into a specific opinion or docket.

What This Actor Does

Court Records Search queries the CourtListener API (/api/rest/v4/search/) across two record types in one run: court opinions (decisions) and federal RECAP dockets (the crowd-sourced mirror of PACER). You provide a search query and an optional court-type filter, and the actor returns normalized, structured JSON — no PACER account, no per-page charge, no scraping fragile HTML.

Pricing

$0.10 per result row delivered (Pay-Per-Event), plus $0.00005 per Actor start per GB of memory. Rows and charges are 1:1 and duplicate rows are removed before billing. A query that matches nothing returns 0 rows and charges nothing. If CourtListener blocks, rate-limits, or changes its response format, the run fails with a message naming the cause instead of finishing green and empty.

Input

Field	Type	Description
query	string	Search term — case name, party, or keyword (required).
courtType	string	federal, state, or all (default all). See the note below.
maxResults	integer	Maximum rows to return, and therefore the maximum billed (default 50).

{ "query": "Acme Corp", "courtType": "federal", "maxResults": 20 }

Note on courtType: federal restricts the opinion search to the Supreme Court and the federal circuits (scotus, ca1–ca11, cadc, cafc). state and all behave the same today — CourtListener's v4 search results carry no populated jurisdiction facet, so a state-only filter cannot be applied honestly at this layer. The run's status message says so on every state run.

Output

Each result is a flat JSON object. Opinion rows and docket rows share most fields; docket rows add assignedTo, referredTo, and cause. Every row carries recordType (opinion or docket).

{
  "caseName": "Watson Bowman Acme Corp. v. RGW Construction, Inc.",
  "court": "California Court of Appeal",
  "courtId": "calctapp",
  "dateFiled": "2016-08-09",
  "dateArgued": "",
  "docketNumber": "F070067",
  "suitNature": "",
  "citation": ["2 Cal. App. 5th 279", "206 Cal. Rptr. 3d 281"],
  "judge": "Franson, Poochigian, Smith",
  "snippet": "Opinion FRANSON, J.— INTRODUCTION RGW Construction, Inc. …",
  "url": "https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/4245751/watson-bowman-acme-corp-v-rgw-construction-inc/",
  "status": "Published",
  "source": "courtlistener.com",
  "recordType": "opinion"
}

Use Cases

• Conflicts & exposure checks — sweep opinions and dockets for a new client or adversary in one call.
• KYC / AML name screening — batch public-record checks during counterparty onboarding.
• Pre-deal diligence — map a target company's litigation footprint before a transaction.
• Litigation research on-ramp — a fast first pass before drilling into a specific opinion or docket.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a PACER alternative? It searches the free RECAP archive of PACER dockets plus CourtListener opinions; no PACER account is needed for covered records.

Does it cover state courts? Yes — state opinions are included in the default all sweep. There is no state-only filter (see the courtType note).

What does each result cost? $0.10 per delivered row; see the live Pricing tab for the current rate.

Why did my run fail? CourtListener rate-limits anonymous callers. The actor retries four times, honouring Retry-After, and only then fails — with a status message naming the cause. Nothing is charged on a failed run.

How is this different from your opinions / docket actors? This is the broad combined search. Use the specialist actors (opinions, RECAP dockets, oral arguments) for deeper single-type fields, or the Federal Litigation Intelligence actor for rolling new-filing monitoring.

Related Actors

• US Court Opinions & Case Law Search — federal & state opinions with citations and cite counts.
• RECAP Federal Court Docket Search — ad-hoc lookup of the free RECAP/PACER docket archive.
• Federal Litigation Intelligence — monitor NEW federal filings by topic, company, or firm.
• Legal & IP Intelligence MCP — MCP server bundling legal + IP tools for AI agents.

About NexGenData

NexGenData publishes buyer-intent actors covering U.S. public-records search, SEC filings, lead generation, competitive intelligence, and MCP servers for AI agents. All pay-per-result. Browse the full catalog at https://apify.com/nexgendata?fpr=2ayu9b

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