CourtListener Adversary Proceedings Scraper - Bankruptcy
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from $3.62 / 1,000 results
CourtListener Adversary Proceedings Scraper - Bankruptcy
Scrape bankruptcy adversary proceedings from CourtListener RECAP by nature of suit, court, party and date, with judges and counsel. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel or XML.
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from $3.62 / 1,000 results
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ParseForge
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βοΈ CourtListener Adversary Proceedings Scraper
π Export bankruptcy adversary proceedings from the CourtListener RECAP archive in seconds. Pick the kind of action, a court and a date range, and get one 36-field row per proceeding with the plaintiff, the defendant, the judge, the trustee, counsel, law firms and the filings that matched. Recovery actions alone hold 18,902 proceedings.
An adversary proceeding is the lawsuit filed inside a bankruptcy case: a trustee clawing back a preference, a creditor arguing a debt should survive discharge, a fight over the priority of a lien. PACER files each one as its own docket, and this Actor pulls them out of CourtListener's RECAP archive by the Form B1040 nature of suit the complaint was filed under. No login and no API key required, and the results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
Adversary proceedings sit in the same RECAP index as the millions of Chapter 7, 11 and 13 petitions they hang off, and nothing on the search page separates them. This Actor does it four ways at once: it searches the 21 Form B1040 codes server side, screens on the missing bankruptcy chapter, reads the separate adversary docket-number sequence (26-01087, or 2:26-ap-01234 in courts that prefix the division), and falls back to the X v. Y caption. All 94 United States bankruptcy courts are covered, and every code was queried one by one against the live API.
| π― Target Audience | π‘ Primary Use Cases |
|---|---|
| Bankruptcy litigators | New preference, fraudulent transfer and dischargeability suits by court and week |
| Trustees and their counsel | Clawback actions filed by other trustees, and who is defending them |
| Creditors and collections teams | 523 dischargeability complaints naming a debtor you are owed by |
| Litigation funders and insurers | Fraudulent transfer and lien priority fights, with the sides of the caption split out |
| Legal tech and AI teams | Structured adversary dockets with stable IDs, parties, counsel and firms |
π What the CourtListener Adversary Proceedings Scraper does
π‘ Why it matters: PACER has no cross-district search for adversary proceedings, and CourtListener's public API returns them mixed into a bankruptcy feed that is overwhelmingly ordinary petitions. Measured on 2026-09-08, 1 of 10 fresh dockets in the Southern District of New York was an adversary proceeding. This Actor sends the nature-of-suit filter to the API so the separation happens server side, flattens each docket into one row, and never bills for a record it did not deliver.
Pick a type of action, or the exact B1040 codes, and the Actor queries CourtListener's search API live, following the cursor until it has the rows you asked for.
- βοΈ One row per adversary proceeding. Case caption split into plaintiff and defendant, court and court ID, docket number and the bare adversary number, PACER case ID, date filed, date terminated and whether the proceeding is still pending, nature of suit as codes and as labels, the action type, the bankruptcy judge with their CourtListener ID, the trustee, every party with IDs, counsel of record, law firms, and the filings that matched your query.
- π£ 21 Form B1040 codes in 9 pickable groups. Recovery of money or property (11, 12, 13, 14), lien validity (21), sale of estate property (31), objection to discharge (41, 51), dischargeability (61 to 68), injunctive relief (71, 72), subordination (81), declaratory judgment (91) and other (02). Every code was queried against the live API on 2026-09-08.
- π All 94 US bankruptcy courts. Read from CourtListener's own courts endpoint, pickable from a list, and the search is scoped to them whether or not you choose one.
- π§Ή Petitions stay out. A Chapter 7, 11 or 13 filing is a petition, not an adversary proceeding, and it is screened out on the bankruptcy chapter and the docket-number sequence before a row is written or charged.
- π°οΈ Full docket timeline (opt-in). Every entry on the proceeding, oldest first, not just the ones that matched the search. Adversary dockets are short, so this is usually one extra request each.
- β³ Pending only. Drop proceedings that already have a termination date and keep live litigation.
- π·οΈ No blanks. Values the source can carry but did not fill read
Not Disclosed; values that do not apply to that record readN/A; booleans readYesorNo.
π¬ Full Demo (π§ Coming soon)
A short walkthrough video is in production.
π Output
Each row is one bankruptcy adversary proceeding. Fields, in dataset order:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
π docketId | CourtListener docket ID, stable across runs |
βοΈ caseName | Adversary caption, for example Tonis v. Greuner |
π url | Docket page on courtlistener.com |
π court / π· courtId / π courtCitationString | Court name, CourtListener court ID (for example nysb), reporter-style abbreviation |
π’ docketNumber / βοΈ adversaryNumber | PACER docket number as written, and the bare adversary sequence with the division prefix stripped |
π§Ύ pacerCaseId | PACER's internal case ID |
π plaintiff / π‘ defendant | The two sides of the caption, split apart |
π
dateFiled / π dateTerminated / β³ isPending | Filing date, termination date (N/A while pending), Yes or No |
π natureOfSuitRaw / π£ natureOfSuitCode / π natureOfSuit / π’ natureOfSuitCodes | The cover-sheet text as PACER wrote it, the primary B1040 code and its label, and every code on the proceeding |
π adversaryCategory / π adversaryCategories | The action type, for example Dischargeability of a debt, and every type the codes map to |
π©ββοΈ assignedTo / assignedToId | Bankruptcy judge, with their CourtListener ID |
π§βπΌ trustee | Trustee on the underlying bankruptcy case, when RECAP carries it |
π₯ parties / partyIds / partyCount | Every party, semicolon-separated, with IDs and a count |
πΌ attorneys / attorneyIds / π’ lawFirms / lawFirmIds | Counsel of record and their firms, with IDs |
π matchedDocumentCount / π matchedDocuments / β hasMoreDocuments | The filings that matched your query (entry number, date, type, description, PDF availability, PACER document ID, URL), and whether the docket holds more |
π dateCreated | When the docket entered RECAP |
π scrapedAt | ISO timestamp of the collection |
β error | null on success; error rows carry only this field and are never charged |
With includeTimeline on, two more columns appear before dateCreated: timelineEntryCount and timeline.
Three real records from a verification run (recovery of money or property, filed since 01/01/2026, Max Items 5):
β¨ Why choose this Actor
| What you get | |
|---|---|
| Adversary proceedings, not petitions | Four measured signals separate the lawsuit from the bankruptcy it sits inside: the Form B1040 nature of suit, the missing chapter, the separate adversary docket-number sequence, and the X v. Y caption. Chapter filings never reach the dataset. |
| 21 B1040 codes, all verified | Every code was queried one by one against the live API on 2026-09-08. Recovery of other property leads with 6,710 proceedings, preference actions follow with 5,249, and revocation of confirmation is genuinely rare at 17. |
| The sides of the caption, split | plaintiff and defendant come out of the adversary caption as their own columns, so a trustee's clawback docket sorts by who is being sued without any parsing on your side. |
| All 94 bankruptcy courts | Read from CourtListener's own courts endpoint, not typed from memory, and pickable from a list. |
| Counsel and firms on the row | Parties, attorneys and law firms come back with their CourtListener IDs. Measured on 20 dischargeability proceedings: 20/20 had parties and counsel, 16/20 had firms. |
| No API key needed | CourtListener throttles anonymous callers at 5 requests a minute per IP, and each request returns 20 rows. Turn the proxy on for a fresh exit IP per request, or paste your own free CourtListener key and the throttle disappears. |
| You pay for what you keep | Rows are billed as they are written and capped at maxItems, so a page that overshoots the cap is trimmed before it is charged. Petitions and duplicates are dropped before billing, never after. |
π How it compares to alternatives
| This Actor | Bankruptcy petition scrapers | PACER directly | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What a row is | The adversary lawsuit inside the bankruptcy | The Chapter 7, 11 or 13 petition | Either, per court |
| Nature-of-suit filter | 21 B1040 codes in 9 pickable groups, one search per code | Chapter number only | Per-court only, no cross-district search |
| Plaintiff and defendant | Split out as columns | Debtor name alone | Behind the docket sheet |
| Court coverage | All 94 US bankruptcy courts, pickable | Varies | One court at a time |
| Matched filings and full timeline | Matched filings on the row, full timeline opt-in | Sometimes | Per page |
| Rows a free account can preview | 10 | Varies | None |
| Ceiling | Anonymous API throttle of 5 requests a minute per IP, lifted by a free key or the proxy | Same source, same ceiling | Per-page fees |
π How to use
- Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
- Open the CourtListener Adversary Proceedings Scraper.
- Pick a type of adversary action, set your courts and dates, and click Start.
- Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.
One typical run: natureOfSuitCategories ["recovery"], courts ["deb","txsb"], filedAfter 01/01/2026, maxItems 200. Run it programmatically through the Apify API or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.
πΌ Business use cases
π‘ Watch clawback litigation as it is filed
Set natureOfSuitCategories to recovery, sort by filing date, and run it on a schedule. Each run returns the newest preference and fraudulent transfer suits first, so a diff against the last run is your alert feed. A defense firm can see every new 547 action in Delaware and the Southern District of Texas the morning after it is docketed.
βοΈ Track a debtor or a creditor across proceedings
partyName searches the party list, which is what PACER indexes, so a company's adversary proceedings come back whether it is plaintiff or defendant. Credit and collections teams use it to see whether a debtor is already being sued for fraud before writing off a balance.
ποΈ Map one court's adversary docket
Pick a court such as deb, nysb or txsb and pull every adversary proceeding filed in a date range, grouped by the code the plaintiff wrote on the cover sheet. Firm marketing teams use assignedTo, attorneys and lawFirms to see who is filing what before which judge.
π Measure filing trends
Every row carries the B1040 codes, the action type and the filing date, so counts by court, quarter and action type fall out of a group-by. Restructuring advisors track whether dischargeability complaints are rising in a district before staffing a practice.
π Automating CourtListener Adversary Proceedings Scraper
- Make / Zapier: trigger a run on a schedule, then push new rows to a CRM, a Google Sheet or a Slack channel.
- Slack: post each new adversary caption, court and action type to a litigation-watch channel.
- Airbyte: land the dataset in Snowflake, BigQuery or Postgres for analytics.
- GitHub: commit the JSON export to a repository to keep a versioned history of filings.
- Google Drive: drop the CSV or Excel export into a shared folder for the practice group.
π Beyond business use cases
- Research: count 523(a)(2) fraud complaints by district and year, or measure how often trustees win preference actions by court.
- Personal: follow an adversary proceeding you are a party to, or watch one filed against a company you deal with.
- Non-profit: monitor student-loan dischargeability filings and consumer discharge objections in the districts you serve.
- Experimentation: train classifiers on cover-sheet codes versus complaint text, or build a docket-alert bot on top of the JSON export.
π€ Ask an AI assistant about this scraper
Give an AI agent live access to bankruptcy adversary dockets through the Model Context Protocol:
Then prompt it in plain language:
- "List the preference actions filed in Delaware bankruptcy court this month."
- "Find dischargeability complaints alleging actual fraud against individuals in 2026."
- "Which law firms file the most fraudulent transfer suits in the Southern District of Texas?"
Copy this into ChatGPT, Claude, or Cursor to start:
β Frequently Asked Questions
β What is an adversary proceeding?
It is a lawsuit filed inside a bankruptcy case, governed by Part VII of the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure. A trustee suing to recover a preference, a creditor arguing a debt should not be discharged, or a dispute over who has priority in a piece of collateral all get their own docket, their own number and their own cover sheet.
β How is it different from a bankruptcy filing?
The petition opens the bankruptcy; the adversary proceeding is litigation inside it. A petition carries a chapter (7, 11, 13) and is captioned with the debtor's name. An adversary proceeding carries no chapter, carries a Form B1040 nature of suit instead, uses a separate docket-number sequence, and is captioned X v. Y. This Actor returns only the second kind. For the petitions, use the CourtListener Business Bankruptcy Scraper.
β Do I need a CourtListener account?
No. Every endpoint this Actor reads is public and anonymous. A free CourtListener API key is supported (courtListenerKey) and lifts the 5-requests-a-minute throttle for long runs, but it is optional.
β What are the Form B1040 codes?
The two-digit codes on the adversary proceeding cover sheet, for example 12 for a 547 preference action, 62 for a 523(a)(2) fraud dischargeability complaint, or 21 for a lien priority fight. They are unrelated to the three-digit JS-44 codes used for district-court civil cases, which is part of why the two never get confused here.
β Does it cover state courts?
No. RECAP is the federal PACER archive, and adversary proceedings only exist in the 94 United States bankruptcy courts.
β Why am I getting no results?
Every filter is ANDed, and an over-narrow combination returns an empty set rather than an error. Drop one filter at a time. Some codes are genuinely rare: revocation of confirmation matched 17 proceedings in the whole archive.
β Why is a proceeding missing its nature of suit or judge?
A docket enters RECAP with whatever the first donated filing carried, and the cover-sheet fields arrive later. Those cells read Not Disclosed until the data lands. When no nature-of-suit filter is set, the Actor still catches those dockets through the chapter, docket-number and caption signals.
β How fast is it, and what is the ceiling?
CourtListener throttles anonymous callers at 5 requests a minute per IP, and each request returns 20 rows, so a direct run tops out around 100 rows a minute. The penalty escalates on a burst: one measured 429 asked for a 272-second cooldown, and the Actor waits it out as the Retry-After header asks. Turn on the proxy for a fresh exit IP per request, or add a free CourtListener key, and the throttle no longer binds.
β Why does picking a category make a run faster?
nature_of_suit is a server-side filter, so CourtListener returns only adversary proceedings and every row on the page counts. With no category or code set the Actor has to screen the whole bankruptcy feed itself, and most of that feed is ordinary petitions.
β Can I get the documents themselves?
The ones already donated to the free RECAP archive, yes: each filing carries the archive path in filepathLocal and isAvailable tells you whether the PDF is there. Turn on availableOnly to keep only proceedings with free PDFs.
β Does it return the full docket?
On request. includeTimeline fetches every entry per proceeding as a second search and adds timelineEntryCount and timeline to the row. It is off by default because it adds at least one request per proceeding.
β Can I find the bankruptcy case an adversary proceeding belongs to?
Not as a linked field. CourtListener's public search hit does not carry the lead case ID, so the Actor does not invent one. The adversary caption, the court and pacerCaseId are what the public surface gives you, and url takes you to the docket where the lead case is named.
β Why fewer rows than Max Items?
Either your query has that many matches, or petitions, closed proceedings and duplicates were dropped. The log prints CourtListener's own total per search and how many records were skipped.
β Does it deduplicate?
Yes. One proceeding often carries three B1040 codes and so matches three of the Actor's searches. Rows are keyed by docket ID across every search in a run, so it is written and charged once.
β How fresh is the data?
It is read at run time from the same index that powers courtlistener.com. Dockets appear as RECAP receives them from the courts' RSS feeds and from RECAP extension users.
β How many rows per run?
Free plan: 10, as a preview. Paid plans: up to 1,000,000, bounded by how many proceedings your query actually matches.
π Integrate with any app
The dataset is available through the Apify API and the JavaScript and Python clients, and every run can be scheduled, triggered by webhook or wired into Make, Zapier, n8n, Airbyte, Google Sheets, Slack and GitHub from the Integrations tab.
π Recommended Actors
- CourtListener Business Bankruptcy Scraper: the Chapter 7, 11 and 13 petitions these proceedings hang off.
- CourtListener Scraper: all six CourtListener indexes, including judges and oral arguments.
- CourtListener Opinions Scraper: full opinion text, walked by court feed.
- CourtListener State Court Dockets Scraper: state court dockets from the same archive.
- Caselaw Access Project Scraper: historical US case law from the Harvard Caselaw Access Project.
π‘ Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more court, government and public-records scrapers.
π Need Help? Open our contact form with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.
β οΈ Disclaimer: This Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Free Law Project or CourtListener. It collects only publicly available court data through the public API. You are responsible for using the data in compliance with CourtListener's terms and applicable laws. Court records concern real people: do not use this data to identify, profile, or target individuals.
