| Michael Dewit | Sunday, April 21, 2002 - 02:13 pm
There is a case where I know the case details, but I don't know who the attorneys were. What is the best way for me to find out which legal firm represented each side? The case is:
Westbeth Corporation v. Castagna.
NYLJ, June 19, 1996, p. 28, c. 6.
Any advice you can offer will be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Michael |
| Anonymous | Sunday, April 28, 2002 - 02:39 pm
Hi Micheal,
You have the case cite just flip to the law journal issue and page you listed and find out what court and county it's in and the index number. Then just go down to the court and pull the file. The attorneys will be listed in the pleadings.
If it is a federal case then it's even easier, just call call the clerk's office with the name and index number, they can check the computer and list all the attorneys in less than a minute. They'll even fax it to you if you ask nicely. |
| Michael Dewit | Monday, May 06, 2002 - 09:08 am
Thank you!!!
I stopped checking the board after a while since I never saw a response. I'm so glad I finally remembered to check back! Thanks!!! I will do exactly as you suggest.
You wouldn't happen to know the answer to one other thing? If I wanted to look up and read about ALL the eviction court cases that have been brought on by a particular building management, what would be the best way to do something like that? Do I have to subscribe to an expensive legal database like Westlaw or Lexis Nexis? Or is there a less expensive alternative?
Thanks again,
Michael |
| Michael Dewit | Monday, May 06, 2002 - 09:16 am
PS. I just saw that you (Anonymous) wrote this in response to someone else's question:
"You can go to the housing court and do a search for the landlord's name."
That's all there is to it, huh? Great! I hope they will let me do it even if I'm not an attorney. And I suppose they give you enough info to then go look up the case in the law library. Terrific. |
| Ronin | Monday, May 06, 2002 - 06:31 pm
You dont have to be an attorney to look up a public record. If they should ever try to prevent you on that basis please let me know, I would definitely do a story about it.
The NYLJ usually includes the index number in their version of the opinion, otherwise it would be useless as a citation.
Searching for a particular management company can be more complicated than described above. The clerks make it more difficult for the public to look up a case in Housing Court. Management companies sometimes misspell their names, use abbreviations, etc. to prevent tenants from finding their old cases.
The court clerks are very unlikely to give you anything related to a law library. They just maintain the actual files of cases. The files have the information you want- the names of the attorneys (assuming the names of the attorneys were not included in the law journal itself).
Good luck.
Ronin |