A February, 2014 Order of the USDC TXWD reaffirmed that uncommunicated edits and corrections made to federal court docket entries do not justify the reopening of time to file an appeal - http://www.courtalert.com/NewsAlert/OrderWithHighlights.pdf

A widely unknown peculiarity within the federal court e-filing practice holds attorneys and law firms responsible to remain current with edits and corrections made to federal court docket events, even if those edits and corrections made by court staff go uncommunicated to the case parties.

Often times, edits and corrections made to federal court e-filed events go uncommunicated to the affected parties on the case. Despite that fact, the parties are still help responsible to maintain a running knowledge of edits and corrections made to the events within the PACER docket. The Court's seem to have little sympathy for this situation as shown in some of the following research: http://www.courtalert.com/LegalResearchforECFAssurance.pdf.

Short of running a regular internal audit looking for edits made to e-filings within the PACER dockets, (which for many firms, is the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack) many firms are simply left vulnerable to this situation, or worse they aren't aware they should be running this type of an audit.

"ECF Assurance", by CourtAlert runs this cost effective internal audit for you, regularly comparing the e-filings your firm has received against their appearance on the PACER docket, on a schedule you determine. When ECF Assurance catches a difference between the e-filings you've received and they appear on PACER, your firm will receive a notice of the updated changes, highlighting removals and additions of text and providing a link to the PDF document within PACER.

Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in learning more about this extremely valuable service we provide at CourtAlert. Also, I'd be interested to hear what firms do in the alternative of our ECF Assurance service to mitigate this risk, so please feel free to comment!

Thanks,

Kara Looney
CourtAlert, West Coast Director of Business Development and Sales
Kara@CourtAlert.com
(310) 921-8741