search-cases

Search NY State Unified Court System (eCourts) Dockets

Purpose

Search the New York State Unified Court System (UCS) eCourts docket surfaces — WebCivil Supreme, WebCivil Local (NYC Civil / Housing / Town & Village), WebCriminal, and WebFamily — and return matching cases as structured JSON. Supports five input shapes (index number, party name, attorney name + filing dates, criminal docket number, or a direct eCourts URL) and returns per-case details: index/docket number, court, caption, case type, filing/disposition dates, status, assigned judge, attorneys, parties, appearance/motion history, NYSCEF case id + document-list URL, and the canonical case-detail URL.

Read-only. Never file a motion, pay a fee, or submit any NYSCEF form.

Status: candidate / blocked. Every public eCourts search form submit is gated by a hard hCaptcha (sitekey 6c824b97-caeb-4a2a-9144-db4f1c9f86d0). Across 3 converged autobrowse iterations (4 started / 175 attempted / 0 solved solver events), Browserbase's --verified auto-solver engaged on every attempt but never cleared the challenge. The form-fill workflow below is fully mapped and verified working up to the submit step; passing the hCaptcha is the single unsolved blocker. See Site-Specific Gotchas.

When to Use

• Look up a NY civil/criminal/family case by index or docket number.
• Find all cases for a party name (last + first or business) in a court/county.
• Find an attorney's cases within a filing-date range.
• Pull a case's caption, judge, attorneys, parties, NYSCEF id, and history.
• Any read-only NY court-docket lookup. Not for filing or paying.

Workflow

There is no public API, JSON endpoint, or URL-param deep-link that returns docket data — the eCourts surfaces are classic server-rendered ASP.NET/Java WebForms, and every search submit is hCaptcha-gated (see Gotchas). The browser flow below is the only path. Use a Browserbase --verified --proxies session (stealth + residential proxy are mandatory — bare sessions draw Cloudflare cdn-cgi/challenge-platform interstitials immediately).

1. Pick the surface from the input shape

Base host for all of the above: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us. The hub page …/webcivil/ecourtsMain links every surface.

2. Fill the search form (WebCivil Supreme — verified working)

All four WebCivil Supreme search types (param=I/P/A/J) and WebCivil Local render the same shared FCASSearch form (<form id="search_form" method="post" action="FCASSearch">); JS shows/hides fields per hWhichPage. Field reference (verified):

• #txtIndex — index number (Index search).
• #txtPlaintiffLname — the party-name box for ALL roles (despite the "Plaintiff" id). Put the last name / business name here.
• #txtAttorneyLname — attorney/firm name (Attorney search).
• #txtJudgeLname — justice name (Justice search).
• rdRepresents radios — role: Plaintiff (= Plaintiff/Petitioner), Defendant (= Defendant/Respondent), OtherRoles, AllRoles.
• #cboCourt — county/court multi-select (Ctrl-click for multiple). Labels read like "New York Supreme Court", "Kings Supreme Court", "Nassau Supreme Court", etc. — one option per county. Required for party/attorney searches.
• #cboYearOfFiling — year dropdown (Index/Attorney scoping).
• rbStatus radios — open (Active/Restored) or all.
• rbFutureCases radios — Y/N (return only cases with future appearances).
• #cboSort — sort order (Year Filed/Index Number, etc.).
• rbOutputFormat radios — HTML (keep this — it's scrapeable) or PDF.

Exact verified sequence (party search):

1. browse open …/webcivil/FCASSearch?param=P
2. browse snapshot once.
3. browse fill #txtPlaintiffLname "<name>".
4. Click the desired rdRepresents role radio.
5. Click the county option in #cboCourt from the snapshot. browse select #cboCourt "New York Supreme Court" fails ("could not find element") — click the option ref instead.
6. Click the rbStatus radio (all for both active + disposed).
7. Leave rbOutputFormat = HTML.
8. Click #btnFindCase ("Find Case(s)").

3. Clear the hCaptcha (the blocker)

Clicking Find Case(s) posts to FCASSearch and lands on an hCaptcha "Verify you are human / Terms of Use" interstitial. The submit button itself carries the widget (class="… h-captcha", data-callback="onSubmit").

• The Browserbase --verified solver engages automatically (console logs browserbase-solving-started, browserbase-captcha-event status:started).
• Do not manually solve. Clicking the checkbox more than once, opening the "Retrieve accessibility cookie" menu, or interacting with the image challenge cancels the auto-solver and traps you on a "drag the missing piece" puzzle.
• Best-known pattern: click the checkbox exactly once, then poll passively (browse wait timeout 15000 + browse get title, up to ~90s) without touching anything. In testing this still did not clear — treat a >90s stall as the wall and emit success: false, reason: "captcha_unsolved".

4. Extract results (post-captcha — design target)

Once past the captcha the results page is a paginated HTML table. Prefer browse get text body / browse get markdown body over per-row clicks. Per row: index number, caption (parties), court/county, and the case-detail link (…/webcivil/FCASCaseInfo?…). Open one detail page and extract court+county+ part, nature of action / case type, filing date, disposition date, status, assigned judge, attorneys (name/firm/role/bar #), parties (name/role/rep), most-recent + full appearance/motion history (detail tab), NYSCEF case id + its document-list URL (…/nyscef/…), and the canonical detail URL.

5. Release the session

browse cloud sessions update "$sid" --status REQUEST_RELEASE.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• hCaptcha gates every search submit — system-wide. Sitekey 6c824b97-caeb-4a2a-9144-db4f1c9f86d0 is identical across WebCivil Supreme (FCASSearch), WebCivil Local (LCSearch), and WebCriminal (DefendantSearch). There is no captcha-free search surface. The Browserbase --verified solver attempted it 175 times across 3 iterations and solved it 0 times — it is a hard/enterprise hCaptcha variant the solver cannot currently clear. Don't burn turns waiting >90s; report the wall.
• Manual captcha interaction makes it worse. Clicking the checkbox repeatedly or opening the accessibility-cookie menu cancels the in-flight auto-solver and drops you onto a visual "drag the missing piece" challenge that is even harder. At most one checkbox click, then hands off.
• Stealth + residential proxy mandatory. The whole iapps.courts.state.ny.us host sits behind Cloudflare (cdn-cgi/challenge-platform) plus per-path __cf_bm/TS* cookies. Bare sessions get challenged before the form even loads. Always --verified --proxies.
• #txtPlaintiffLname is the universal party-name field for every role — the id is misleading. The rdRepresents radio, not the field, sets the role.
• browse select #cboCourt … does not work — the county multi-select must be driven by clicking the option ref from a snapshot.
• Selecting a county is effectively required for party/attorney searches; an unscoped statewide search is very slow and may time out.
• Shared form across search types. param=I/P/A/J all return the same FCASSearch form HTML; the active fields are toggled client-side by the hidden hWhichPage value. Set the right param in the URL so the correct fields are visible.
• WebFamily / Housing Part are access-restricted. …/fcasfamily/fcasMain 302-redirects; many Family and Housing records are not public. When a surface returns an access-restriction notice, surface that message (access_restricted: true) rather than fabricating data.
• Output format matters. Choose HTML, not PDF — the HTML results table is scrapeable; PDF output returns a binary you'd have to parse.
• No API / no deep-link. Confirmed: there is no JSON endpoint and no query-param URL that returns docket data without going through the captcha- gated WebForm. Don't waste time hunting for one.
• eFiling lives on a separate surface. NYSCEF (…/nyscef/…) and Surrogate's Court (websurrogates.nycourts.gov) are distinct apps; case-detail pages link out to the NYSCEF document list when a matter is e-filed.

Expected Output

{
  "success": true,
  "query": {
    "court_type": "Supreme Civil",
    "search_type": "party_name",
    "party_last_name": "Smith",
    "role": "Defendant",
    "county": "New York",
    "status": "all"
  },
  "result_count": 50,
  "cases": [
    {
      "index_number": "150123/2024",
      "docket_number": null,
      "caption": "JOHN DOE v. JANE SMITH",
      "court": "Supreme Court, New York County",
      "case_detail_url": "https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASCaseInfo?index=..."
    }
  ],
  "case_detail_sample": {
    "index_number": "150123/2024",
    "court": "Supreme Court",
    "county": "New York",
    "part": "IAS Part 12",
    "case_type": "Tort - Other Negligence",
    "filing_date": "2024-01-15",
    "disposition_date": null,
    "status": "Active",
    "assigned_judge": "Hon. Jane Roe",
    "attorneys": [
      { "name": "Smith & Assoc.", "firm": "Smith & Assoc. LLP", "role": "Plaintiff", "bar_number": "1234567" }
    ],
    "parties": [
      { "name": "JANE SMITH", "role": "Defendant", "representation": "Pro Se" }
    ],
    "most_recent_event": { "type": "motion", "date": "2024-05-02", "description": "Motion to dismiss" },
    "history": [
      { "type": "appearance", "date": "2024-03-01", "description": "Preliminary conference" }
    ],
    "nyscef_case_id": "123456",
    "nyscef_doclist_url": "https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/CaseSearch?...",
    "canonical_detail_url": "https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASCaseInfo?index=..."
  },
  "access_restricted": false,
  "error_reasoning": null
}

Other outcome shapes:

// hCaptcha could not be cleared (the current real-world blocker)
{ "success": false, "reason": "captcha_unsolved",
  "error_reasoning": "WebCivil FCASSearch submit gated by hCaptcha sitekey 6c824b97-caeb-4a2a-9144-db4f1c9f86d0; Browserbase --verified solver attempted but did not clear within 90s." }

// Court restricts public access (Family / Housing)
{ "success": true, "access_restricted": true,
  "error_reasoning": "This court's records are not available to the public through eCourts." }

// No matching cases
{ "success": true, "result_count": 0, "cases": [], "case_detail_sample": null }