Court Delta

Is this court-payment demand a scam? Assesses a contact someone received against known North Carolina (NC) court-scam patterns.

Use this when someone describes being contacted about jury duty they missed, unpaid court costs, a warrant, or a bond — and being asked to pay. Gather what they can tell you and pass it in; every field is optional, and a partial description still gets an assessment.

THE ASSESSMENT IS DETERMINISTIC, NOT A JUDGEMENT CALL. Upstream rules decide the severity; you are not being asked to estimate risk yourself. Report what comes back.

severity 2 = "Matches known scam patterns" (LIKELY SCAM). A payment method NC courts never accept, a jury-duty demand above the $50 statutory penalty, or a cold contact that also carries a payment demand or arrest threat.

severity 1 = "Matches some known scam patterns" (USE CAUTION).

severity 0 does NOT mean the contact is legitimate. It means none of the patterns this tool checks for were present in what was described. Say exactly that — never "this looks legitimate", never "you're fine". Someone reading a false all-clear may send money. The safe next step is always to verify independently through the court, using a number they look up themselves.

Pass the ids listed in the parameter types verbatim — they are a fixed vocabulary. behavioral_flags accepts any of: threatened_immediate_arrest, claimed_to_be_official, used_target_personal_details, spoofed_caller_id, gave_callback_number, pressured_to_stay_on_line, asked_to_stay_on_phone_during_purchase, requested_ssn_or_financial_info, transferred_to_supervisor_or_clerk, background_noise_office_or_radio, asked_to_meet_in_person, after_hours_contact, demanded_secrecy.

raw_description is anything else they were told, in their own words. It is used for the assessment and to derive category tags; the text itself is not stored.

IF THEY GAVE A CASE OR CITATION NUMBER, caseLookup.status comes back "pending" — this tool does not fetch the record. Call lookup_court_case with that number to check whether it is real, and read the two answers together: a demand referencing a case that does not exist is strong evidence of a scam, and a real case number does NOT make the payment demand legitimate (scammers cite real numbers).

Always surface facts (what NC courts actually do) and reporting (where to report). If they already sent money, point them to the FBI IC3 link in reporting. WHEN SEVERITY IS 1 OR 2, ASK THEM TO REPORT IT. ask_them_to_report carries the ask and the reason: reports are what show which scams are running in which NC counties right now, so the next person who checks gets a current warning. Their minute protects someone else. Make it an offer — if they decline, drop it. At severity 0 there is no such field and you must not ask, because nothing has been established as a scam. Every link you pass on — this one and the NCDOJ / FTC / IC3 ones — must keep its https:// prefix so it is clickable. reporting.court_delta.markdown is already formatted for that; use it verbatim rather than retyping the domain. reporting.court_delta.url is a scam-trend tracker, NOT a law-enforcement report — never present it as one, or as a substitute for the NCDOJ / FTC / IC3 routes.

Never asks for or transmits a name or phone number. A de-identified record — claim type, channel, county, payment method, flags, amount, severity — is stored so scam trends can be tracked. NC only. Informational, not legal advice.

Which expunction statute and AOC petition form fit how each charge ended.

Reads the case's actual per-charge dispositions and routes each one to the statute(s) that cover that outcome, with the petition and instruction-sheet links, where to file, and the fee. Call with no caseNumber to get the whole statute table.

CHECK automaticExpunction FIRST AND LEAD YOUR ANSWER WITH IT. Under G.S. 15A-146(a4), a case where EVERY charge was dismissed without leave, dismissed by the court, or ended in a not-guilty/not-responsible finding — all disposed on or after 12/01/2021, with no felony dismissed pursuant to a plea agreement — is expunged BY OPERATION OF LAW, 180 to 210 days after final disposition. NOTHING IS FILED. No petition, no form, no fee.

When automaticExpunction.applies is true, the correct answer to "what do I file?" is "nothing — it happens on its own between and ". Do NOT lead with the petition forms; sending someone to a clerk with a $175 fee discussion when the charges expunge themselves for free is a wrong answer. The petition routing is the fallback if the automatic expunction does not in fact occur.

THIS IS THE ONE DETERMINATION THIS TOOL MAKES, and it is safe precisely because (a4) turns only on how the charges on THIS case ended — which the record shows in full — and not on anything person-level. determinable: false means the record could not answer (a charge with no disposition, an unrecognised disposition); say so rather than treating it as a "no".

EVERYTHING ELSE ROUTES. IT DOES NOT DECIDE ELIGIBILITY, and you must not present it as doing so. Three reasons, all of which belong in your answer when someone asks "can I get this expunged?":

• Eligibility is PERSON-level. A disqualifying conviction anywhere bars relief, and this data cannot confirm identity — date of birth is rarely published and is masked to the year, and common names collide heavily.

• A prior expunction can itself disqualify, and an expunged case is REMOVED from the court record — so the very thing that would disqualify someone is invisible here.

• Some expunctions bar future ones, so which statute you petition under matters. The North Carolina (NC) Courts guidance is to consult an attorney about that choice.

"NOT YET ELIGIBLE" IS SAFE TO SAY when a waiting period plainly hasn't run — that is arithmetic. "Eligible" is never safe to say.

WAITING PERIODS come from G.S. 15A-145.5(c): 3 years for one nonviolent misdemeanour, 7 for more than one, 10 for one nonviolent felony, 15 for breaking or entering under 14-54(a), 20 for two or three felonies. THE DATE RETURNED IS THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE. The statute runs the clock from conviction OR from completion of any active sentence, probation or post-release supervision, WHICHEVER IS LATER — and completion dates are not in this record. Say the date is a floor, not a target.

family per charge: "dismissed", "acquitted", "convicted", "pjc", or "unknown". Treat each differently:

• dismissed + withLeave: true → the State may still REINSTATE the charge. Flag it, and note it also defeats automatic expunction under (a4).

• dismissed + perPleaAgreement: true → 15A-146 treats dismissals pursuant to deferred prosecution or conditional discharge differently from plain ones.

• "acquitted" → found not guilty or not responsible at trial. Routes to 15A-146(a2), and qualifies for automatic expunction under (a4).

• "pjc" → neither conviction nor dismissal; no statute is suggested, by design.

• "unknown" → the register text didn't map (e.g. "Superior Process/ Probation Other"). The full statute table comes back instead. Do NOT guess an outcome.

An impaired-driving charge returns no statutes: G.S. 15A-145.5(a1) makes it ineligible.

G.S. 15A-146(a6): a court may grant a petition under that section WITHOUT a hearing, except where the section says otherwise. Do not tell someone to expect a hearing on a 15A-146 petition as though it were automatic.

Read-only. NC only. Informational, not legal advice.

"Do I have to go to court for this ticket?" — answered from the citation itself.

For someone holding a paper North Carolina (NC) citation, BEFORE their case is searchable. Returns waiver eligibility per charge (waivable / mandatory / conditional) plus how to ask for a reduction or dismissal. FAST — no court-portal request, unlike the other tools.

IF THE USER HAS A CASE NUMBER, USE lookup_court_case INSTEAD. It runs these same rules on the real charges and also gives the court date and the amount owed. This tool is for when there is no case number yet.

THE STATUTE DRIVES THE ANSWER. Pass the G.S. number printed on the citation (e.g. "20-141(J1)", "G.S. 20-127(D)"). Without a parseable statute a charge cannot be classified — ask the user to read the "G.S." line off their citation rather than guessing from the offense name. unclassified lists any charge that fell through.

PASS EVERY CHARGE ON THE CITATION, not just the one asked about. Eligibility is computed ACROSS the citation: one mandatory charge forces an appearance for all of them. Reporting on a single charge in isolation gives the wrong answer — a real Wake case has two waivable charges and one DWLR, and the correct answer is "you must appear".

viaCompanionCharge: true on a charge means exactly that: it would be waivable on its own, but AOC mandatory-appearance item #39 makes every violation on a citation mandatory once ANY violation on it is. Never tell someone they can pay such a charge off separately or handle it by mail — the whole citation must be appeared on. Say which charge is forcing it, since that is usually the one they want to ask the District Attorney about.

SPEED CHANGES THE ANSWER. With no charged speed a speeding charge comes back conditional, not waivable: over 80 mph, or more than 15 over while over 55, is mandatory. Pass actual_speed/speed_limit if known — or just pass the offense line verbatim ("SPEEDING 85 IN A 65"), which is parsed for the speed.

PASS offense VERBATIM FROM THE CITATION for every charge, not a paraphrase. A few rules cannot be decided from the statute number alone and are read off the offense text: texting is waivable UNLESS it was while operating a school bus, and a registration or title violation is waivable UNLESS it involves stolen, altered or fictitious plates or certificates. Both statutes are the same either way, so a paraphrase that drops "school bus" or "fictitious" silently turns a mandatory appearance into "waivable". If the user summarises rather than quotes, ask for the exact wording on the citation before answering.

county (optional) decides the reduction path: participating counties get NC's online Guide & File link, others get the in-person District Attorney route.

A null citationOptions means these are NOT waivable-citation charges — either not NC Chapter-20 traffic, or a serious criminal charge (impaired driving, death by vehicle, eluding) or a felony, where "it's just a ticket" framing is wrong. Say that plainly; do not present it as "no appearance required".

General guidance for the charges given, NOT a lookup of any real case, and not legal advice. amountDue is always null here — there is no case to read a balance from.

What this Court Delta server covers, with example questions.

Call this ONLY when the user asks what this server / connector can do, what data it has, or how to use it. It is NOT a step toward answering a court question — if the user asked about a case, a citation, a person, or a bond, skip this and call lookup_court_case / search_cases_by_party directly. Calling this first just delays their answer.

Takes no arguments. Returns static text; makes no court-portal request.

Which courthouse, where it is, when it's open, and where to park.

For "I have court on Tuesday — where do I go?". Give a county ("Wake") or a caseNumber to derive it. From the North Carolina (NC) AOC directory plus Google Places.

RETURNS locations[], NOT ONE COURTHOUSE. 19 counties have several venues and picking one silently is a real way to send someone to the wrong building. Wake has a Courthouse, a Justice Center AND a Clerk's office; Guilford has courthouses in Greensboro and High Point, in different cities. multipleLocations:true means you must disambiguate rather than assume.

TO PICK THE RIGHT ONE, USE THE CASE'S HEARING LOCATION. lookup_court_case returns upcomingHearings[].location (e.g. "Wake Co. Justice Center"), which usually names the building. Match it against locations[].name, allowing for "Co." vs "County". BUT DO NOT FORCE A MATCH: measured on real hearings, a third have "No location" at all, and several use names that don't correspond to the directory — "Buncombe Co. Judicial Complex" is the Buncombe County Courthouse, "Alamance Co. JB Allen" is the Alamance County Courthouse. When it doesn't map cleanly, SHOW THE OPTIONS and let the user choose. Guessing between Wake's Courthouse and its Justice Center is exactly the wrong place to be confident.

HOURS ARE REAL — and watch for lunch closures. A value like "08:30-12:30, 13:30-17:00" means the venue SHUTS between those times; someone arriving at 1pm in Nash, Wilson, Cherokee or either Guilford courthouse finds a locked door. Say the closure out loud. Courts also close on NC state holidays, which these hours do not encode.

parkingAttributes are what the venue publishes — "freeLot", "paidGarage", "onSite" etc. ABSENT MEANS NOT CLAIMED, NOT "no parking". nearbyParking (actual lots near the building, with distanceMeters and a mapsUrl) and parkingMapUrl (a static map image, courthouse marked "C") appear on AT MOST ONE location — the one the scrape described. Their absence on the others is not a statement about them.

accessibility is published PER BUILDING — "wheelchairEntrance", "wheelchairParking", "wheelchairRestroom", "wheelchairSeating", "restroom". Report what a venue claims. An ABSENT flag is NOT a claim that the feature is missing: every venue claims wheelchair entrance, parking and restroom, but only 15 of 121 claim accessible SEATING, and no venue publishes assisted-listening data at all. For anyone who depends on a specific accommodation, give what's listed and say to call the courthouse to confirm the rest — do not report "not accessible" from a missing flag.

source:"nccourts-scrape" means the directory had no entry and this fell back to the live site, so hours will be empty — tell the user to call rather than inventing them. All 100 counties are currently in the directory, so this should be rare.

THIS IS LOCATION INFO, NOT CASE INFO — nothing about hearings, charges or status; use lookup_court_case for those. Cite the disclaimer: verify with the clerk before travelling. Read-only. NC only.

Driver's-licence points under G.S. 20-16(c) — a COMPARATOR, not a lookup.

Returns what each possible outcome would cost: convicted as charged, reduced to improper equipment, prayer for judgment, or dismissed. That comparison is the useful answer; a single number is not. Fast — no court-portal request.

LICENCE POINTS ONLY. Insurance (SDIP) points are a SEPARATE system with different values, set by the Rate Bureau rather than statute, and are NOT included. If someone asks what a ticket will do to their premium, say this tool doesn't cover that.

THE PJC SCENARIO'S ZERO HAS TWO EXCEPTIONS and you must state them. Under G.S. 20-4.01(4a) a prayer for judgment counts as a CONVICTION — so it does carry points — if it is the THIRD OR SUBSEQUENT PJC within any five-year period, or for ANY PJC where the driver holds a CDL or the offence was in a commercial vehicle. Prior PJC history is not in court records here, so the 0 assumes neither applies.

unmatched[] LISTS CHARGES THAT COULD NOT BE SCORED — always mention them. The schedule has a real "All other moving violations = 2" row, so a charge that matched the catch-all (viaCatchAll: true) and one we failed to classify are different things; do not let a total silently omit either.

Non-Chapter-20 charges score nothing at all — a drug or assault charge is not a traffic offence and gets no points. Non-moving violations (improper equipment, parking, inspection, registration, adult seat belt) are 0, which is why "reduce to improper equipment" is the standard outcome people seek.

SPEEDING TURNS ON ABSOLUTE SPEED, not how far over the limit: the schedule row is "speeding in excess of 55 mph = 3". 50-in-a-45 is 2, not 3. Pass actual_speed when known — without it a speeding charge cannot be scored and lands in unmatched.

POINTS ARE NOT THE WHOLE CONSEQUENCE OF A SPEEDING CONVICTION. Check excessiveSpeedingSuspension and report it whenever it applies. G.S. 20-16.1(a) mandates a 30-DAY LICENCE SUSPENSION, imposed by the Division without a preliminary hearing, on conviction of either (i) more than 15 mph over the limit while ALSO above 55 mph, or (ii) any speed above 80 mph. This is separate from and additional to points. An 85-in-a-65 is only 3 points but ALSO costs the licence for 30 days — reporting the 3 alone is a true number that leaves a false impression. Pass speed_limit as well as actual_speed: without the limit, branch (i) cannot be assessed and the tool abstains (determinable: false) rather than implying there is no suspension.

That suspension attaches only ON CONVICTION, so a reduction, PJC or dismissal avoids it — which is usually the single biggest factor in the comparison, bigger than the points.

G.S. 20-16.1(b)(1): on a FIRST conviction only, the trial judge "may when feasible" allow a limited driving privilege for purposes reasonably connected with the HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE of the person convicted and their family. There is no listed "work" privilege — employment is commonly argued under welfare, so do not describe it as a work privilege as though the statute named one. The permit is valid for 30 days from issuance and the judge may restrict days, hours, vehicle types and routes.

THIS TOOL CANNOT TELL WHETHER IT WOULD BE A FIRST CONVICTION — prior convictions are not in the record, so the seven-year look-back cannot be applied. The privilege is discretionary and conditioned on feasibility. Answer "you can ask the court", never "yes, you will get one". Do NOT import limited-privilege rules from the DWI statute (G.S. 20-179.3); there is no "hard suspension period" concept in G.S. 20-16.1.

SUSPENSION FOR ACCUMULATED POINTS is a different mechanism again, with TWO thresholds (G.S. 20-16(a)(5)): 12 points in three years, and 8 in the three years after a licence is reinstated. Pass priorPoints and recentlyReinstated if the user knows them — neither is in any court record, so without them no suspension assessment is made.

Set commercialLicense or outOfStateLicense and the tool REFUSES rather than guessing: a separate, higher schedule applies to CDL holders, and an out-of-state conviction is assessed by the licensing state under the Driver Licence Compact.

Informational, not legal advice. Whether a reduction or PJC is actually available is a decision for the District Attorney and the court.

"What am I in court for today?" — an attorney's HEARING CALENDAR.

Returns every scheduled hearing in the date range: date and time, case number, caption, hearing type, judge and courtroom. Defaults to TODAY in North Carolina (NC) when no dates are given, so get_attorney_hearing_calendar(bar="21262") is exactly "what's on my calendar today".

THIS IS THE TOOL FOR "TODAY", "TOMORROW", "THIS WEEK" AND "MY CALENDAR". search_cases_by_attorney is a different question: it lists the cases an attorney is of record on and its file_date_* filters bound WHEN A CASE WAS FILED. A case filed in 2023 has hearings today, so filtering that tool's file date to today returns cases OPENED today — almost always nothing. Never substitute it for this.

PASS EITHER bar OR BOTH last AND first. A lone first or last name is rejected. PREFER THE BAR NUMBER whenever the user can supply it: it resolves to exactly one attorney, and a name may not.

READ attributable BEFORE ATTRIBUTING THE CALENDAR TO ANYONE. True means these hearings belong to exactly one attorney; false means they do not and must not be described as one person's day. On a BAR search it is always true and attorney_name is null — the hearing search returns no name, so that null means "not reported", not "ambiguous".

A NAME SEARCH MAY NOT BE ATTRIBUTABLE. The hearing grid has no attorney column, so if a name matches several attorneys their hearings come back MERGED with no way to tell whose is whose. To catch this the tool cross-checks the name against the case index and reports matched_attorneys:

• exactly one match -> attorney_name is set; treat the calendar as that person's

• more than one -> the calendar spans them all and CANNOT be split. Say so and ask for a State Bar number. Do not present it as one lawyer's day.

• none -> no cases exist under that name, so an empty calendar may mean the name is wrong rather than the day being clear.

The cross-check is evidence, not proof — a single match still warrants preferring the bar number when the answer decides whether someone travels to a courthouse.

SLOW ON A CACHE MISS — 30-120 seconds, because it drives a real browser through two CAPTCHAs. Tell the user you're pulling their calendar and let it run. This is the opposite of search_cases_by_attorney, which is fast and needs no warning. Repeat calls for the same search and range are served from a 6-hour cache and return instantly; cached: true with fetched_at tells you which you got. If the answer is being used to decide whether to appear somewhere, quote fetched_at.

AN EMPTY CALENDAR IS A REAL ANSWER, BUT ONLY WHEN THE LOOKUP SUCCEEDED. If the call returns an error, the calendar could NOT be checked — say that, and never turn it into "you have nothing scheduled". Those differ by someone missing court.

Covers all 100 counties at once; there is no county filter on this search. Public record. Read-only. NC only. Informational, not legal advice.

What was FILED — every case of a given type in a county over a date range.

Answers "what IF cases were filed in Surry County yesterday?", "show me the estate cases opened in Wake this week", "how many civil suits were filed in Mecklenburg on Monday?". This is the DOCKET axis. The other searches are name axes — use search_cases_by_party / _business / _attorney when you know WHO, and this when you know WHAT and WHEN.

EVERY ROW NOW CARRIES case_status, with no enrich needed — so do not call lookup_court_case merely to find out whether a case is open or closed. The returned text is FINER-GRAINED than the four filter values: alongside "Pending" and "Disposed" you will see "Disposed - Voluntary Dismissal", "Disposed - Dismissal on Order of the Court", "Disposed - Clerk of Superior Court" — i.e. HOW it ended, not just that it did. So never test it with equality against the filter vocabulary (status == "Disposed" misses most disposed rows); match on a prefix, and quote the portal's own wording when you report it.

date_start/date_end are the FILED date, not a hearing date. A case filed in 2023 can have a hearing today — for "who is in court today", use get_attorney_hearing_calendar. Accepts YYYY-MM-DD, or the words "today" and "yesterday" (resolved in North Carolina (NC) time).

Defaults to YESTERDAY, not today, when no date is given, and says so in date_note. Today's filings are still being keyed in by clerks, so a "today" answer is a partial set that reads like a complete one.

case_type is a case-number PREFIX, not a type code. CR also returns CRS; CV also returns CVD and CVM. Read case_type_breakdown before reporting a count as "42 CR cases" — some of them may be CRS.

Common types: IF infraction (traffic), CR/CRS criminal, CV/CVD/CVM civil, E estate, SP special proceeding, M civil misc. judgment (liens, lis pendens).

Completeness. The portal caps a search at 200 cases; this splits the query by date and case-number prefix to get past that. If truncated is true the count is a LOWER BOUND, and incomplete_prefixes names the exact buckets that were not read — say what is missing rather than reporting the number as a total. The remedy is a shorter date range or a county.

An empty result is a real answer, but only when the lookup succeeded. On an upstream failure this returns an error; never report that as "nothing was filed".

county_filter: "server" means the county was applied by the portal itself before its cap, and every row is additionally checked against the county code embedded in its case number — so a county-filtered result here is exact, unlike the location-substring filter the name searches use.

A date range is required (max 31 days) — an unbounded search cannot be completed. Read-only public record, North Carolina only. Informational, not legal advice.

Look up a North Carolina (NC) court case or traffic citation.

Provide a case number (e.g. "26CV001234-012"), a citation number (e.g. "92403H2"), OR a portalSessionRef from a search_cases_by_party row. caseNumber is the STABLE, canonical identifier — prefer it for anything that isn't an immediate follow-up. portalSessionRef is a fast path that resolves an already-searched case without re-running the portal search. Its lifetime is UNSPECIFIED and not guaranteed — the value rotates on every search and should be treated as short-lived (it survives at least minutes; the upper bound is unmeasured); never persist or reuse it. (caseHash is accepted as a deprecated alias for portalSessionRef.) Returns case status, upcoming and recently-elapsed hearing dates/times/ locations, charges (including speed fields for traffic cases), and — for traffic charges — whether each charge is waivable or requires a court appearance under the NC AOC schedules, plus how to request a reduction or dismissal (online via NC Guide & File when the county participates, else in person via the District Attorney) in citationOptions.howToRequest.

Read-only: no email is sent and nothing is saved. North Carolina only. Informational, not legal advice.

EVERY LOOKUP ENDS WITH TWO THINGS, PER CASE. Both are spelled out in present_to_user, the FIRST key of this result, already filled in for this particular case — read it and do what it says. (1) caseSummaryUrl — hand it to the user and call it the durable, shareable link to the full case record. It does not expire, it is publicly viewable, and the same case returns the same link every time, so it is the canonical way to cite or share the case. THE KEY IS ALWAYS PRESENT, so "when it appears" is not the test — the VALUE is: non-null means give it; null means minting failed on this lookup, so say nothing about a link rather than substituting trackThisCase.url, a portal URL, or a guess. (2) alerts — when alerts.available is true, ask whether they'd like email alerts when the case changes: a new court date, case information, case events, service events, or financial updates. ASK and wait for a yes. Never call subscribe_to_case_updates on your own initiative and never invent an email address. When available is false the case is closed, disposed, or not found — nothing would ever be sent — and you must not raise it. IN A MULTI-CASE TURN DO BOTH FOR EACH CASE, beside that case's own details. Two cases means two links and two offers; one combined link, or a single offer at the end of the answer, is wrong. (A search row's portal_url is ephemeral by contrast — don't present that as durable or persist it.) upcomingHearings lists only FUTURE hearings; pastHearings lists recently- elapsed ones (most recent first). The top-level status of "no_upcoming_hearings" means exactly that — NOT that the case has no hearing history. Before telling the user they have no court date, check pastHearings: an empty upcomingHearings with a non-empty pastHearings means a hearing has ALREADY occurred (they may have missed it) — a different answer than "nothing scheduled." Never infer "you didn't miss court" from an empty upcomingHearings/status alone. service answers "was the defendant actually reached?" on civil / SP / estate cases — the civil-side counterpart to bailRisk, and null on criminal/traffic, where service of process does not apply (null there = NOT APPLICABLE, not "not served"). Read status FIRST; three of its values mean the absence of a return is EXPECTED and must never be reported as "not served":

• served / unserved / mixed — a return of service is docketed. mixed means both outcomes appear (several defendants, or the alias-and-pluries retry cycle).

• proven_other — a certificate / affidavit / acceptance of service instead of a formal return. Still proof.

• appeared_service_moot — the defendant answered or appeared, which waives a service defect. Service became unnecessary.

• not_required — an appeal or petition; no summons is issued at all.

• pending — a summons went out recently and nothing is back YET. Say "service is still outstanding", NOT "they weren't served".

• unknown — a summons issued, nothing returned, and the case isn't new. returns[] is the full history (the retry cycle is often the story) and latestReturn the most recent attempt. returns[].party is NULL about a third of the time — the docket records the outcome without naming who it applied to — so never read a null party as "nobody". For the same reason there is deliberately NO per-defendant served flag: one case in the sample had a single docketed return against 41 defendants, and a per-party boolean would be confidently wrong. legacyScan:true means the paper file was scanned as ONE bundle rather than itemised, so proof of service may sit inside that PDF where no docket-text rule can see it — a missing return is weak evidence on those cases. causesOfAction is the civil counterpart to charges — the claims pleaded (cause, filedOn, remedy), e.g. "CV - Unfair Trade Practice". On a civil / SP / estate case this is usually the ONLY statement of what the matter is about, so lead with it there. An empty list means the docket does not ITEMISE causes, NOT that no claims exist — say the docket doesn't break them out rather than implying the case is about nothing. Repeated boilerplate entries are collapsed; distinct dates are kept, since a cause added later is an amendment. Each charge also carries offenseDate (when the offense occurred — different from the case's filedOn, and usually what someone means by "when was this?") and agency (the citing law-enforcement agency). If a tool returns an error with retryable / upstream_status, that is a transport or portal failure — NOT a statement about the case. Never turn it into "no results" or "case not found"; say the lookup itself failed, and retry only when retryable is true. caseCategory normalizes the case class (criminal | civil | infraction | special_proceeding | estate | juvenile | other). Use it to read null fields correctly: on a NON-criminal category, bailRisk/citationOptions = null means NOT APPLICABLE, not "none found." parties is the register-of-actions roster (name + roles[] + attorneys[]{name, appointment} + selfRepresented + counselWaived) — appointment is how counsel came to the case ("Retained" = the party hired them, vs "Court Appointed" / "Public Defender"; null when unstated, and the list is learned from the register rather than a closed set). It is what makes a counselWaived:true party who nonetheless HAS counsel intelligible — appointed, then a waiver, then retained. The authoritative source for identifying who is on a case and their role, especially on civil/SP cases where the caption/DOB are absent; prefer it over a party-search row's caption for entity resolution. selfRepresented:true = no counsel of record (self-listed as own attorney OR a filtered counsel-absence sentinel, with no other attorney); it does NOT distinguish an active pro-se appearance from a defaulted / served-by-publication defendant. counselWaived is a SEPARATE, independent flag — NOT a narrowing of selfRepresented — and it is NOT a claim the party is unrepresented: it can be true while attorneys[] is non-empty (seen on 22CR702455-520, counselWaived:true with a Court Appointed AND a Retained attorney, the docket running appointed counsel -> Waiver of Counsel -> retained counsel). Always read it WITH attorneys[], never instead of it. counselWaived is set by either Odyssey placeholder "attorney" name, filtered out of attorneys[] rather than shown as a lawyer: "WAIVED, WAIVED" (counsel affirmatively waived on the record — the docket does not say whether the waiver covered all assistance of counsel or only court-appointed counsel) or "PRO SE" (the party asserted as their own representation). Either means the party declined counsel rather than merely lacking it, but the flag does NOT say which placeholder produced it, so it is not proof the party is litigating pro se. counselWaived:false means NOT OBSERVED, not "did not waive". A true value is predominantly a criminal-side artifact and is rare on civil rosters — treat it as unexpected but NOT impossible on a non-criminal caseCategory; don't read one there as an error. A false unrepresented party is still any of defaulted / never-served / unappeared-entity / pro-se-without-a-docketed-marker — or simply TOO EARLY: on a recently-filed case that has not had a hearing yet, counsel is frequently not entered on the roster. parties reflects what is DOCKETED, not who is retained; check filedOn and an empty pastHearings before reading an empty attorneys[] as unrepresented — on a pending case that has not been to court, "not shown yet" is usually the better answer than "no lawyer." attorneys[] non-empty ⇒ represented ⇒ selfRepresented false. documents lists scanned filings, newest first — {date, name, url}, where name is the register entry that produced it ("Bond Forfeiture Notice", "Release Order Issued", "Waiver of Counsel"). Most criminal cases have at least one; an empty list means nothing is scanned in, not that nothing was filed. Offer the links when they're relevant to what was asked. Retrieval is UNRELIABLE — the portal intermittently returns errors or an empty body while it prepares a document — so present a link as something that may need a retry, never as "here is the document", and never state or guess at its contents: this server does not read them. dispositions gives the per-charge OUTCOME behind a "Disposed" status — one row per charge with plea, disposition, sentence, dispositionDate, judge, and any judgment documentUrls. This is how you answer "what happened to the case / to a charge": a "Disposed" caseStatus alone does not say whether a charge was dismissed, pled down, or convicted — read dispositions for that (e.g. a speeding charge reduced to improper equipment shows plea "Responsible to Lesser"; a "VD-District Dismissals ... Per Plea Agreement" is a dismissal). Empty on pending/undisposed cases. trackThisCase is an upstream ELIGIBILITY FLAG (non-null only on an open case), not something to act on: this server already consumes it — it is what gates alerts.available — so don't reason from it, and never show trackThisCase.url to the user. That is a generic signup page with no case identity. The case-specific paths are caseSummaryUrl and, once the user has said yes, subscribe_to_case_updates. For criminal cases with a bond or bail activity, bailRisk is non-null: failure-to-appear history (ftaCount, date-deduped; ftaEvents[] gives the raw counted entries {date, description} for auditing — voided "in Error/Stricken" FTAs are already excluded), FTA-triggered ordersForArrest, bond amount/type, and the NCGS §15A-544.5(f) prior-FTA bar. That bar turns on FTAs that preceded the bond's EXECUTION, not the case total: bondExecutedOn is the "Bond Posted" date for the operative bond and priorFtasAtExecution counts FTAs strictly before it (null when no posting is docketed).

• setAsideBarInapplicable:true (0-1 prior FTAs) is RELIABLE — (f) cannot bar a set-aside. State it plainly; it's the answer that tells someone a motion is worth filing.

• setAsideBarPossible:true (2+ prior) is NOT a finding that the bar applies. It means only that the TIMING fits. Under (f), actual notice exists ONLY where a judicial official noted the prior failures on the defendant's release order. Check releaseOrderFBox below before saying anything further, and never say "the forfeiture cannot be set aside" on the strength of this flag alone.

• Both false = execution date unknown; neither ruled out nor suggested. releaseOrderUrl is the portal PDF of the release order governing that bond — the document the (f) question actually turns on, since the judicial official's "second or subsequent failure to appear" notation appears there (AOC-CR-200) and in NO structured field. ALWAYS present this link when setAsideBarPossible is true, even when the read below already answered the question: the order is the authority. releaseOrderFBox IS THAT READ, present only on barred cases where the order could be fetched and parsed. Report it, and report it precisely — this is the field that decides whether someone spends their one motion:

• "unchecked" — on its face (f) does NOT bar a set-aside; the prior FTAs do not block relief and it is worth pursuing. Say so, and add that they should confirm it on the order before relying on it.

• "checked" — (f) MAY bar it. Do NOT say "cannot be set aside". Tell them to confirm on the order BEFORE filing, because a motion that fails uses up the single opportunity for relief.

• "ambiguous" — the order was opened and the box could NOT be read. Say exactly that, and hand over the link. The notation is a flattened checkbox with no glyph in the text layer, so the printed label appears whether or not it is marked. NEVER round this to "unchecked": a misread tells a bondsman to abandon a recoverable bond.

• absent / null — no read was attempted (not a barred case, no order docketed, or the fetch failed). This is ALSO not "unchecked". Fall back to the link. For the forward-looking question ("could a bond I write NOW be barred?") use ftaCount: 2+ FTAs on the case means the next release order should carry the judicial notation — tell the user to read it before signing. Then forfeiture with its status (the latest DOCKETED forfeiture event — may lag the clock) and the 150-day set-aside clock (noticedOn, deadline, daysRemaining, windowOpen). noticeAnchor says where noticedOn came from: "notice_event" = an explicit forfeiture NOTICE line (the date the statute runs the 150 days from); "earliest_forfeiture_event" = no notice was docketed, so the earliest forfeiture entry stands in — the deadline is then a CONSERVATIVE proxy (earlier than the true notice), and daysFtaToNotice measures FTA-to-forfeiture rather than FTA-to-notice. Don't present a proxy-anchored deadline as the exact statutory date — treat windowOpen/daysRemaining as authoritative for whether the set-aside window is open; once windowOpen is false the window has closed even if status still reads in_effect. deadlineNextBusinessDay is the first day the clerk's office is open on or after deadline (equal to it when that is already a business day; later when it falls on a weekend or NC court holiday). ADVISORY ONLY — it never moves daysRemaining / windowOpen, which stay on the strict notice+150 date, because the safe error is telling someone they have LESS time, never more. null = UNDETERMINED (deadline year outside the published NC holiday calendar), NOT "no adjustment needed"; never present a null as though the deadline is a normal business day. triggeringFta (latest counted FTA on or before noticedOn) and daysFtaToNotice (the gap in days) report HOW LONG after the failure the forfeiture notice was docketed. Report the number; do NOT call a long gap a defect or a filing error — there is deliberately no threshold flag, and whether a gap affects the notice's validity is for the reader's attorney. Plus the bonding agent (Fiduciary) + surety (insurer). All from public NC eCourts records. (citationOptions is null on disposed/closed cases — the reduction path isn't live.) Informational underwriting signal, not legal advice; don't state legal conclusions.

Triage a SHORT list of people for North Carolina (NC) court cases.

Built for the "here is a list of names, which ones have cases?" question — a CSV of applicants, tenants, or bond clients. This server cannot accept file uploads: read the file yourself and pass the names as an array.

Returns COUNTS AND FACETS PER NAME, not case detail — matched, case_count, counties, case_types, case_numbers (first few), portal_truncated. That keeps a 5-name response readable. Once you know which names are interesting, call search_cases_by_party (full rows) or lookup_court_case (one case) on those.

LIMITS, and why they are low: each name runs a LIVE portal search, and the upstream session token is shared by every user of this service — a wide fan-out risks blocking it for everyone. Max 5 names per call, 3 at a time. Split a longer list across calls.

SLOW BY NATURE: measured ~60s for 3 names and ~2 minutes for 5. Tell the user you're checking and roughly how long it takes; don't retry on a slow response, and don't treat the wait as an error. If your client's timeout is tight, send fewer names.

PARTIAL RESULTS ARE NORMAL: one name failing (portal hiccup, timeout) does not fail the batch — that entry comes back with an error and the rest still return. Report which names were checked and which weren't; never present a failed name as "no cases found", because those mean completely different things.

portal_truncated: true on a name means the portal hit its statewide 200-case cap, so that person's count is a LOWER BOUND — narrow with county, case_status, or a filed date range and re-run that name.

Dates: ISO YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YYYY — both accepted. file_date_* bounds when the case was FILED, not when a hearing is scheduled.

Matching is exact on last + first name (no soundex here — it broadens results and would make a screening list noisier). A common name will match multiple different people; case_count is "cases matching this name", NOT "cases belonging to one person". There is no DOB or identity confirmation in this tool — do not treat a hit as identifying a specific individual.

Read-only. NC only. Public records. Informational, not legal advice.

Cases where an attorney is counsel of record — by bar number OR by name.

"What's on my docket?" for a lawyer or firm. Returns the case number, caption, filing date, case type and county for every case the register lists that attorney on. Each case_number goes straight into lookup_court_case.

EVERY ROW NOW CARRIES case_status, with no enrich needed — so do not call lookup_court_case merely to find out whether a case is open or closed. The returned text is FINER-GRAINED than the four filter values: alongside "Pending" and "Disposed" you will see "Disposed - Voluntary Dismissal", "Disposed - Dismissal on Order of the Court", "Disposed - Clerk of Superior Court" — i.e. HOW it ended, not just that it did. So never test it with equality against the filter vocabulary (status == "Disposed" misses most disposed rows); match on a prefix, and quote the portal's own wording when you report it.

FAST — about 3-15 seconds. This uses the portal's own attorney-search mode, not the slow WAF-and-CAPTCHA hearing scrape, so do NOT warn the user about a long wait here.

PASS EITHER bar OR BOTH last AND first — a first name alone or a last name alone is rejected. Prefer the bar number when you have it: it resolves to exactly one attorney, whereas a name can match several.

WHEN A NAME MATCHES MORE THAN ONE ATTORNEY, attorney_name comes back NULL and matched_attorneys lists everyone matched — the results are then a MERGED docket spanning all of them. Say so and offer to narrow by bar number; do not present it as one lawyer's caseload. When exactly one attorney matched, attorney_name is set, and it is worth echoing so the user can confirm it resolved to who they meant.

case_status="Pending" is usually what someone means by "my cases" — without it you get their entire history, which for a working attorney is mostly closed matters and will hit the cap below. Old cases legitimately remain Pending, so a 2016 case in a Pending list is not necessarily an error.

THE 200-CASE CAP IS REAL AND IT BITES HERE. truncated: true means matches are MISSING, not merely unshown — a busy defender or a large firm exceeds 200 routinely. case_status and file_date_start/file_date_end narrow SERVER-SIDE and genuinely recover cases; county does NOT — it filters after the cap, so a truncated county-filtered count is a lower bound, not a county total. Say the list is incomplete rather than presenting it as the attorney's full caseload.

A DATE RANGE MAY NOT BE ENOUGH ON ITS OWN. Measured: bar 21262 restricted to cases filed in 2024 still returned 200 truncated: true, spanning only 20 Nov – 31 Dec. Narrow to a few months and check truncated again rather than assuming one year fixed it.

Dates: ISO YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YYYY — both accepted. file_date_* is WHEN THE CASE WAS FILED, not when a hearing is. For "what's on my calendar today", use get_attorney_hearing_calendar — filtering by file date answers a different question and will usually return nothing.

"OF RECORD" IS NOT "CURRENTLY REPRESENTING". This is what the register records, so withdrawn, substituted and long-closed representations still appear. Do not describe the result as someone's active caseload.

Public record — the portal offers this same search to anyone, so this is not a private view of a firm's book of business.

Read-only. North Carolina (NC) only. Informational, not legal advice.

Cases with a COMPANY as a party — by business name.

Use this, not search_cases_by_party, whenever the subject is an organization: an LLC, corporation, insurer, hospital, landlord, dealership or municipality. Party search requires a first AND last name, which a business does not have, so it cannot answer this at all.

FAST — about 5-45 seconds. No CAPTCHA. Do not warn about a long wait.

EVERY ROW NOW CARRIES case_status, with no enrich needed — so do not call lookup_court_case merely to find out whether a case is open or closed. The returned text is FINER-GRAINED than the four filter values: alongside "Pending" and "Disposed" you will see "Disposed - Voluntary Dismissal", "Disposed - Dismissal on Order of the Court", "Disposed - Clerk of Superior Court" — i.e. HOW it ended, not just that it did. So never test it with equality against the filter vocabulary (status == "Disposed" misses most disposed rows); match on a prefix, and quote the portal's own wording when you report it.

TYPE THE NAME AS IT APPEARS, COMMA INCLUDED. The comma is significant and NARROWING: "FOOD LION, LLC" is a different, smaller search than "FOOD LION". Do not strip it, and do not replace it with a wildcard — advice to do that appears in the portal's help text but applies to a different search mode.

WILDCARD: a trailing * is allowed and needs AT LEAST 4 characters before it. "WALM*" works; "WAL*" is rejected. Use it for a company whose exact registered name you do not know ("CAROLINA TOWING*").

THERE IS NO PARTY ROLE IN THIS RESULT, ON PURPOSE. The portal labels every row "Defendant" regardless of the truth — including cases the company FILED as plaintiff and criminal cases where it was the victim. NEVER say the business is the defendant. Read the side from case_name ("X VS Y" — the company's position in the caption is the real signal), or call lookup_court_case for the actual party list.

THE 200-CASE CAP BITES IMMEDIATELY FOR ANY CHAIN OR INSURER. results_truncated: true means real matches are MISSING. Worse, county filters AFTER that cap, so a truncated county-filtered count is a LOWER BOUND, never a total — "11 cases in Wake" may be 11 of the 200 statewide the portal was willing to show. Only case_status and the file-date range narrow server-side. Say the list is incomplete instead of reporting a count as if it were complete.

matched_businesses lists the distinct entity names actually hit. More than one means legally separate entities are mixed together ("FOOD LION, LLC" alongside "DELHAIZE AMERICA, LLC") — surface that rather than treating them as one company.

Dates: ISO YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YYYY — both accepted. These bound WHEN THE CASE WAS FILED, not when anything is scheduled. A year at a time is the most effective way to get a chain's cases under the 200-cap: 'FOOD LION' unfiltered caps out, but restricted to 2023 it returns 42 complete rows.

Public record. Read-only. North Carolina (NC) only. Informational, not legal advice.

Search North Carolina (NC) court cases by a person's name.

Returns (person, case) matches from the NC eCourts party-name search. Each row carries a case_number (the stable id) and a portal_session_ref — a Tyler token whose lifetime is UNSPECIFIED (it rotates every search; survives at least minutes; upper bound unmeasured). Pass it to lookup_court_case (as portalSessionRef) for a quick follow-up; for anything persisted or delayed use case_number. Never persist or reuse the ref. Each row also carries portal_url — the direct NC eCourts source record; it embeds the same short-lived token, so treat it like the ref (don't persist). caseSummaryUrl (from lookup_court_case) is the durable link. EVERY ROW NOW CARRIES case_status, with no enrich needed — so do not call lookup_court_case merely to find out whether a case is open or closed. The returned text is FINER-GRAINED than the four filter values: alongside "Pending" and "Disposed" you will see "Disposed - Voluntary Dismissal", "Disposed - Dismissal on Order of the Court", "Disposed - Clerk of Superior Court" — i.e. HOW it ended, not just that it did. So never test it with equality against the filter vocabulary (status == "Disposed" misses most disposed rows); match on a prefix, and quote the portal's own wording when you report it.

Rows carry party_type (the person's role) plus party_role_source: "caption" = surname confirmed in the case caption (trust it); "portal_party_type" = role from the portal's own PartyTypeKey but no caption to confirm (common on SP / foreclosure cases — usable, but corroborate for high-stakes use); null = no role (or a role dropped as suspect, e.g. a citing officer mislabeled "Defendant" on someone else's caption). For an AUTHORITATIVE role/roster, call lookup_court_case and read its parties list. party_role_verified (bool) = source == "caption". Read-only. NC only. Informational, not legal advice.

Required: last, first. Filters differ in where they apply:

• SERVER-SIDE narrowing (reduce the portal search — the ONLY way to clear the 200-case cap): case_status ("Pending"|"Disposed"|"Closed"|"Reopened"), the filed-date range file_date_start/file_date_end (ISO YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YYYY — both accepted), and a more specific name.

• soundex: true is also server-side but BROADENS (phonetic surname matching → MORE matches, more likely to truncate) — don't enable it to clear a cap.

• CLIENT-SIDE (filter the rows already returned; do NOT recover cases missed by the cap): county ("Wake" or "Wake County") and case_type (pick a value from the narrowing.caseTypes facet).

Speed: a search runs a live portal query and takes ~15-50s, with real run-to-run variance — do NOT pick filters for speed. Narrow for COMPLETENESS: case_status and a file_date range are server-side and are the only filters that recover cases past the 200-cap; county/case_type only filter what was already returned.

Two different limits:

• portal_truncated true = the portal hit its statewide 200-case cap, so the set is INCOMPLETE (real matches are missing). See portal_truncated_note; when true, narrowing gives counties only (counts are lower bounds). Clear it with case_status / date range / a more specific name.

• results_truncated true = the (complete) set exceeded limit, so not all rows are shown. Pass a higher limit (up to 200) to show them all.

Breadth (read narrowing_hint): the tool never asks you to withhold results, and it distinguishes two cases with different remedies:

• INCOMPLETE (portal_truncated true): the shown cases are valid but some are missing. Present them, and to recover the rest narrow with server-side filters (a filed-date range or case_status) — or, if autonomous with no user to ask, re-call confirm_broad=true to proceed as-is.

• COMPLETE but long (a large set with portal_truncated false): nothing is missing. List or summarize the results; refining (county/case_type/date) is optional, not required. A moderate complete set is a fine answer on its own.

Search North Carolina (NC) money judgments and criminal sentences by party name.

This is the JUDGMENT index, NOT the case index. A judgment is what a court ENTERED on a case — a money judgment against someone, or a criminal sentence. Use this for "does X have a judgment against them", "how much do they owe on it", "is it still active", "find liens/judgments before I lend or rent". For the case itself — charges, hearings, next court date, parties, service — use search_cases_by_party (by name) or lookup_court_case (by number). Every row carries case_number: that is the handoff key into lookup_court_case when the user wants the underlying case.

IT CARRIES REAL PROPERTY LIENS, WHICH IS NOT OBVIOUS. NC files these as "Civil Misc. Judgment" records on the judgment docket, so this index — not the case search — is where they live. cause_of_action on each row says which kind, and the values seen in production include:

CV - Claim of Lien              (G.S. 44A claim of lien on real property)
CV - Federal Tax Lien           CV - NC Certificate of Tax Liability
CV - Lien                       CV - Employment Security Comm Lien
CV - Institutional Lien (Hospitals)
CV - Lis Pendens                (pending action against the property)
CV - Transcript of Judgment     (a judgment docketed from another county)
CV - Summary Ejectment, CV - Money Owed, CV - Possession,
CV - Collection on Account, CV - Other, FAM - Divorce, ...

So "are there any liens against this person?" is answerable HERE, and answerable well: this index has no 200-cap, so a clean search really does mean none found.

DO NOT FILTER TO "lien" TO ANSWER "ARE THERE ANY LIENS?" — that under-reports badly. A money judgment docketed with the clerk is ITSELF a lien on the debtor's real property in that county, whatever its cause of action says. So CV - Money Owed, CV - Collection on Account and CV - Transcript of Judgment rows are encumbrances too. Measured on one name: 4 rows whose cause contains "lien", and 35 further docketed money judgments the filter would silently drop — roughly a tenfold under-count. For a lien or title question, DO NOT filter; report the whole set and let the reader classify.

cause_of_action is for isolating a RECORD TYPE — "show me only the lis pendens", "only the summary ejectments" — not for deciding what counts as a lien.

ASK WHICH RECORD TYPES THEY WANT — do not guess. Run the search, read narrowing["Cause of Action"] (computed from the actual rows, BEFORE any filter, so it always shows the full menu), tell them what is there, and let them choose.

cause_of_action MATCHES ON SUBSTRING AND FILTERS CLIENT-SIDE. "lien" catches every lien variant above; "Claim of Lien" catches only G.S. 44A. Because the index offers no server-side filter for it, the match runs over the rows already fetched — so when results_total exceeds what was fetched, cause_of_action_note will say the count is NOT a total. Read that note before reporting a number.

NOT in this index, and not anywhere in this server: UCC financing statements (those are NC Secretary of State), Register of Deeds records, and lien-agent notices under G.S. 44A-11.1 (liensnc.com is not a court system). Say so plainly rather than implying a clean search covered them.

Provide at least one of party, case_number, alias, or from_date. party is a name in "LAST, FIRST" form (business names work as-is). case_number accepts dashed or undashed. from_date/to_date bound the date the judgment was ORDERED (not the case filing date, and not a hearing date) — ISO YYYY-MM-DD or MM/DD/YYYY, both accepted.

A PARTY SEARCH DOES NOT COVER ALIASES, so this tool checks them for you. party and alias are separate indexes with no overlap — measured, a search for "WILLIAMS, PAMALA" as a party misses a judgment filed against "MCARDELL, PAMALA" that lists "WILLIAMS, PAMALA" as an alias. Whenever you pass a full party name, an alias sweep runs automatically alongside it and its hits come back in alias_matches, separate from results.

READ alias_sweep.status BEFORE CALLING ANYONE CLEAR: "ran" -> aliases were checked. Zero matches is a real negative. "failed" -> they were NOT checked. Say so; do not report the search as clear. "skipped" -> not applicable, EXCEPT when the reason says the name was a surname only. Ask for a full "LAST, FIRST" name and re-run.

AN ALIAS IS NOT NECESSARILY A FORMER NAME. It is any other name recorded for that party — a maiden or married name, a hyphenated or reordered variant ("LEWIS-WILLIAMS, FARRAH" vs "WILLIAMS, FARRAH LEWIS"), or a fuller spelling ("WILLIAMS, SHANE" vs "WILLIAMS, SHANE CHRISTOPHER"). Measured, 15% share the party's own surname. Do NOT describe an alias as a name that was "changed", and do not infer a marriage or divorce from one — the record does not say.

An alias_matches row is filed against a party recorded under a DIFFERENT NAME, so it may be the same person or an unrelated namesake. Report those rows as leads to confirm — never state them as this person's judgments, and never merge them into a total owed. They carry no amounts.

alias as an INPUT searches the alias index directly and takes the same "LAST, FIRST" form ("PAMALA WILLIAMS" returns nothing). Passing it explicitly turns the automatic sweep off, since it would repeat the same query.

Row-level debtor_aliases / creditor_aliases list other names recorded for that party. They are populated essentially only on alias searches — empty on a party search is normal and means nothing.

CIVIL vs CRIMINAL — read this before reporting a null. Each row has a case_category of CV, CR or FAM. judgment_type populates on civil rows; sentence_type populates on criminal rows. A null on either one means NOT APPLICABLE to that row's category — it is NOT an absence of fact, and must never be reported as "no sentence recorded" or "no judgment type".

DOLLAR AMOUNTS ARE FETCHED AUTOMATICALLY WHEN THE RESULT SET IS SMALL — do NOT ask the user whether to pull them. Leave detail unset and this tool decides: a case_number search, or any search returning 10 rows or fewer, comes back with amounts already included. Check detail_included to see what happened, and detail_skipped_reason when it didn't.

The reason it is not unconditional: detail fans out one upstream call PER ROW. A broad name search with detail forced on has been measured timing out at 60s — "ANDERSON, DAVID" returns 153 judgments, and asking for 153 amounts at once fails outright, whereas the same search without detail succeeds. So on a large result set the amounts are deliberately skipped and detail_skipped_reason tells you how to narrow (county, date range, judgment_type, or a specific case_number). Narrow and re-run rather than forcing it.

Override only if you must: detail=true still respects the row guard and will not fan out over a large set; detail=false suppresses amounts entirely.

With detail, each row gains total_judgment_amount, principal_amount, court_costs, attorney_fees, interest_rate, judgment_status and the for/against party roster. Amounts are strings; a null means the court recorded no value, which is different from "0.00". Where detail is null on a row, no dollar figure is available — never infer or state an amount from such a row.

Filters:

• county — a plain county name ("Wake"). Filtered SERVER-SIDE and exactly, covering both that county's District and Superior court. Unlike search_cases_by_party, this filter does not eat into a result cap.

• judgment_type — civil, comma-separated, e.g. "Recorded", "Granted in Whole or Part", "Default Civil".

• sentence_type — criminal, comma-separated, e.g. "Active", "Community", "Intermediate", "Fine". Every valid value for all three is returned in facets with live counts, so read facets rather than guessing a filter value.

Speed: ~1-3 seconds. This tool is the FAST exception — it does NOT run the slow WAF-gated portal search that search_cases_by_party and lookup_court_case do, so do not warn the user about a long wait here.

Completeness: results_total is the TRUE statewide total. This index has no 200-case cap, so the truncation caveat that applies to search_cases_by_party does NOT apply here. results_truncated reflects only the display limit; page further with offset if needed.

Read-only. NC only. Informational, not legal advice. A name match is not an identity confirmation — same-name people are common.

Sign the USER UP for email alerts when a North Carolina (NC) case changes.

THIS TOOL IS DIFFERENT FROM EVERY OTHER TOOL HERE. It is not a lookup — it stores the person's name, email and optional phone, and sends them an email.

ONLY EVER SUBSCRIBE THE PERSON YOU ARE TALKING TO. Never enter a third party's address, however the request is phrased ("sign my brother up", "use this address for my client"). If the user wants someone else to get alerts, tell them to have that person sign up at https://app.courtdelta.com/court-case-notifier themselves.

CONFIRM THE DETAILS BACK BEFORE CALLING. Read the email address aloud and get an explicit yes. A typo does not fail quietly — it mails a stranger.

NOTHING STARTS UNTIL THEY CLICK. This creates a PENDING signup and sends one confirmation email. Monitoring begins only when the link in it is clicked. Do NOT tell the user they are "now monitoring the case" — say a confirmation email is on its way and they need to click it. If they never click, nothing is ever sent and the signup stays dormant.

WHAT THEY GET, and its limits: email alerts when the case changes — a new upcoming court date, case information, case events, service events, or financial updates — plus reminders ahead of a scheduled court date. Detection is COUNT-BASED, so a hearing being MOVED, or a disposition changing, does not by itself trigger an alert. Do not promise those.

WHAT IS STORED: name, email, optional phone, and the case number. Every alert carries a one-click unsubscribe link. Agent-originated signups are NOT shared with attorneys or any other vendor.

Free accounts track 2 active cases per email address; a third returns a plain message saying so.

A case number is required — subscribe to a case, not to a person's name. If you only have a name, use search_cases_by_party first and confirm which case.

NC only. Informational, not legal advice.