Re: need place to look up case law

Posted by lawguy (216.30.212.58) on April 10, 2003 at 09:15:38:

In Reply to: need place to look up case law posted by scott on April 10, 2003 at 02:49:52:

I looked up the case on Westlaw. Its a pretty good case by the 9th Circuit over what constitutes a violation of the FDCPA. It deals with 1) a notice that does not contain the requisite information concerning disputing the debt, and 2) another notice that threatens to take action that cannot legally be taken. The Court found that in both cases the creditor violated the act.

As for looking up case law. Most courts have some of their more recent decisions online at their website. However, these usually won't go back past 1990 at the earliest, and most only go back about 5 years.

In order to get complete access to state and federal court opinions, it will cost money. Lexis and Westlaw are very expensive, especially for access to the law of all US jurisdictions. (My firm spends about $1000 a month on Westlaw for unlimited access to all jurisdictions for 11 attorneys.)

If you really want full access to all jurisdictions I would suggest subscribing to Versuslaw. (www.versuslaw.com) For $10 a month you can have access to all state and federal courts. For $20 a month you can get all the state codes as well, although I would think this is a waste since you can usually look these up on each state's legislatures website.

I've not used versuslaw, but its my understanding it doesn't have a bunch of the neat search and citation features that Westlaw and Lexis have. Its database only goes back so far too, usually for each jurisdiction to around 1930-1960, with a couple being pretty recent. But for your purposes it should be quite sufficient.

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