I have created a little bookmarklet for searching for Texas cases in the Courts of Appeals and Supreme Court. A bookmarklet, if you’re not familiar with that term, is a “smart bookmark” that does some action when you use it. It’s actually a little program, so you can do pretty handy things with bookmarklets.
How this Bookmarklet Works
When you select a case number (e.g., “01-02-00345-CV”) and click on the bookmarklet, a new window will open with the TAMES case page for the case number in question. In my example, that would be this page. So, for example, you can highlight the case number in Westlaw, then click this bookmarklet, and it will open a new window with the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court page (as appropriate) for the case. This makes it easy to check petition/writ history, motions for rehearing, and the like.
Features
- Works with all Court of Appeals and Supreme Court of Texas cases. It doesn’t work with the Court of Criminal Appeals, which uses a different website structure than the other courts.
- Understands sloppy highlighting. For example, it’s okay if you highlight “No. 01-02-00345-CV.” The “No. ” and trailing “.” will be ignored.
- Understands en-dashes. For example, it automatically converts “01–02–00345–CV” to “01-02-00345-CV”.
- Automatically fixes “incomplete” numbers. For example, it automatically converts “1-2-345-CV” into “01-02-00345-CV”.
- If you haven’t selected anything or if what you have selected isn’t a valid case number, it takes you to the main TAMES search page.
How to Use It
Here is the link to the bookmarklet: TAMES Case Search
For instructions on how to add it to your browser (at least for Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Opera), please see the instructions on this page. In general, you should just be able to drag the link above to your bookmarks toolbar.
Source Code
For those who are interested, here is a formatted version of the bookmarklet’s code.
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| javascript: | |
| /** | |
| * TAMES Case Number Search Bookmarklet | |
| * (c) 2014 Ed Cottrell | |
| * | |
| * Licensed under the MIT License | |
| * | |
| * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy | |
| * of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal | |
| * in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights | |
| * to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell | |
| * copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is | |
| * furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: | |
| * | |
| * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in | |
| * all copies or substantial portions of the Software. | |
| * | |
| * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR | |
| * IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, | |
| * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE | |
| * AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER | |
| * LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, | |
| * OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN | |
| * THE SOFTWARE. | |
| */ | |
| function TAMESSearch() { | |
| var domain = "http://www.search.txcourts.gov/", /* Domain for the searches */ | |
| path = "CaseSearch.aspx?coa=cossup", /* Initialize the URL to use if we cannot do a search */ | |
| gs = window.getSelection(); /* Get the selection */ | |
| /* See if the user has actually selected anything */ | |
| if(gs.type != "None") { | |
| var caseNoContainer = gs.getRangeAt(0), /* Get the selected range */ | |
| sc = caseNoContainer.startContainer; /* Get the data container for the selection */ | |
| if(typeof(sc.data) != "undefined") { | |
| /* Get the raw selection */ | |
| var caseNo = sc.data.substr(caseNoContainer.startOffset, caseNoContainer.endOffset – caseNoContainer.startOffset); | |
| /* Replace en-dashes with hyphens and strip any leading or trailing characters */ | |
| caseNo = caseNo.replace(/\u2013/g, "-").replace(/^[^\d]+|[^CRV\d]+$/g, ""); | |
| /* If the case is a -CR or -CV case, make sure the numeric parts are appropriately padded with leading zeroes */ | |
| if(caseNo.match(/C[RV]$/)) { | |
| caseNoParts = caseNo.split("-"); | |
| caseNoParts[0] = ("00"+caseNoParts[0]).slice(-2); | |
| caseNoParts[1] = ("00"+caseNoParts[1]).slice(-2); | |
| caseNoParts[2] = ("00000"+caseNoParts[2]).slice(-5); | |
| caseNo = caseNoParts.join("-"); | |
| } | |
| /* If the case number is non-empty, get the URL for the search page. */ | |
| if(caseNo != "") { | |
| var path = "Case.aspx?cn="+caseNo; | |
| } | |
| } | |
| } | |
| /* Open the search window */ | |
| window.open(domain+path); | |
| } | |
| TAMESSearch(); |
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