I want to find a recent or old court case.
I have the names of the parties.
I want to find cases on legal topics.
I want to find an old case and I only have the name of one of the parties
I want to find the record of a name change.
I want to find records and information on estate proceedings and wills
Answer
If the case is recent or still in litigation, you may be able to find it through eCourts. The eCourts service allows searching by parties' names, but not by legal topic or statute.
Finding cases on topics requires researching legal resource materials such as annotated statutes, digests, and treatises. This will require a visit to a public access law library.
Court records are the papers filed in a case; a court decision is the ruling by the judge. When looking for a case, it is important to know that few cases are "published." Published means the judge's decision is printed in a legal reporter and indexed by case name and topic. Most appealed cases get published, but few low-level court cases are published.
New York State is fortunate to have an official reporter for court cases. The New York State Law Reporting Bureau's selection of trial court cases means that New York state legal researchers can find trial court cases, unlike most states. Cases since 1956 can be searched by word, party name and citation on the New York Official Reports Service page.
If you have the party names of an old case, it may be possible to find the citation* through the West 1st and 2nd Digests Table of Cases volumes. The online services, Westlaw and Lexis, do not include these old cases in their electronic databases. The nineteenth century reporters are available in hard copy and micro-film in selected public access law libraries.
The court records may be available through the New York State Archives or the County Clerk.
Cases not published in a legal reporter may have been reported in a local newspaper such as the Brooklyn Eagle. Contact a public library for questions about nineteenth century newspapers.
The records of name changes are retained permanently and may require local searching. Some name change records are sealed. Contact the local court clerk.
Papers filed in Surrogate's Courts, including wills, may be available through WebSurrogate. Wills filed for Safekeeping are not available for public view.
*citation A group of numbers and letters used to find a case in a law text book or legal reference.