Research · 11 min read
How to Find Out Whether a Company Has Been Sued or Penalized
Four public indexes hold most of what exists, they are run by four different bodies, and none of them searches the others. Knowing which one answers which question is most of the work, and knowing what each one omits is the rest.
Key takeaways
- There is no single index — a consumer protection agency's case library, the federal courts' records service, the drug regulator's letter index and state attorney general actions are four separate records.
- The federal courts' service covers appellate, district and bankruptcy courts, so a state court case does not appear in it, and most pre-1999 cases exist only on paper.
- The consumer protection agency says its library holds cases brought in federal court and cases brought through its own internal administrative process, and the second kind produces no court docket at all.
- A docket entry records what was filed rather than what was proven, and the entries after the opening complaint are where the case actually goes.
- The warning letter index carries a standing note that subsequent interaction may have changed the regulatory status of the issues discussed, and shows response and close-out letters as separate columns.
- Every one of these is searched by name, so the legal entity behind a brand has to be settled first — and an empty result is only meaningful with the boundary of the search written beside it.
Answer first: there is no single search
There is no one place that holds every action against a company. There are several places, each maintained by a different body, each covering a different slice, and each searched separately.
The four that matter most for a health company selling directly to consumers are a federal consumer protection agency's case library, the federal courts' electronic records service, the drug regulator's letter index, and a state attorney general's own published actions.
A fifth thing is worth saying at the start. Every one of these is searched by name, and the name that works is the legal entity rather than the brand on the website. Searching the wrong string returns nothing, and nothing looks exactly like a clean record.
That is the single most common way this check goes wrong, and it is the reason to settle the entity question before opening any of the four.
The consumer protection agency's case library
The Federal Trade Commission publishes what it calls a legal library. Its own description is that the library gives easy access to the agency's case information and other official legal, policy and guidance documents.
The cases page states the scale and the scope in two sentences. Every year the agency brings hundreds of cases against individuals and companies for violating the consumer protection and competition laws it enforces, and those cases can involve fraud, scams, identity theft, false advertising, privacy violations and anti-competitive behavior.
It then says where the cases came from. The library has detailed information about cases the agency has brought in federal court, or through its internal administrative process, which it calls an adjudicative proceeding.
That second route is the one people miss. An administrative proceeding is not a court case and will not appear in a federal court index, so an agency matter can exist without any docket to find.
The filter panel on the same page is worth reading once, because it names record types that are separate objects rather than synonyms. Adjudicative proceedings, closing letters, commission letters, banned debt collectors, petitions to quash and process enforcement each sit under their own heading.
What this library covers is matters brought by that agency. A dispute between a customer and a company is not in it, and neither is an action by a different regulator.
The federal courts, and the large hole in the middle of them
Federal case files are maintained electronically and available through a service called Public Access to Court Electronic Records. The judiciary describes it as a service of the federal courts whose mission is to give the public the broadest possible access to court records.
Anyone with an account can search and locate appellate, district and bankruptcy court case and docket information. Where you do not know which court a case was filed in, a case locator supports nationwide searches to determine whether a party is involved in a federal case, and that database updates at midnight each day.
Now the hole. That scope is federal. A suit filed in a state court is not in this system, and a great many consumer disputes are filed in state courts. So an empty federal result is a fact about one court system, not about a company.
There is an age limit as well. Most cases created before 1999 are maintained in paper format only, obtainable from the court where the case was filed or from a records center.
Access is not free. The program is funded entirely through user fees set by the policy-making body of the federal courts, published in a fee schedule. Case files can also be read at public access terminals in the clerk's office of the court where the case was filed, which is the route with no account attached to it.
What a docket entry is, and what it is not
A docket is a list of what has been filed. A complaint appearing on one records that someone filed a document making allegations, and it records nothing about whether those allegations are true.
Cases settle, get dismissed, get consolidated, and get decided, and each of those is a separate entry. Reading only the first document in a file is how a filing gets mistaken for a finding.
So the useful discipline is to read to the end of the docket before forming a view, and to notice the difference between a document a party wrote and a document the court issued.
This is also why a count of cases is a poor measure of anything. A large company is a party to filings as an ordinary condition of existing, and the number on its own carries no weight.
The drug regulator's letter index
FDA publishes its warning letters in a searchable index, and the index is more structured than most people expect. Columns carry the posted date, the letter issue date, the company name, the issuing office, the subject, and links to any response letter and any close-out letter, alongside an excerpt.
Filters narrow by issuing office, by letter issue date, by posted date, by year, and by whether a letter has a response or a close-out attached.
The standing caveat printed above the search is the part to read first. Matters described in these letters may have been subject to subsequent interaction between the agency and the recipient that may have changed the regulatory status of the issues discussed. To obtain additional available information, the agency asks to be contacted.
That sentence does a lot of work. A letter on the index is a snapshot of a moment, and the presence of a close-out letter beside it is the visible sign that the moment moved. Where nothing is attached, the index is not saying the matter is open — it is saying nothing.
Records beyond what is posted are obtained through a freedom of information request, and the index gives the address for one.
A state attorney general's own actions
State offices bring their own consumer protection cases and publish them. One state's consumer protection division, for example, points readers to its news releases for news on the division's lawsuits and enforcement actions.
Those pages are the accessible record of state-level activity, and they are organized by the office rather than by the company, which makes them a browsing resource rather than a lookup.
The reason to check them at all is jurisdictional. A company selling into fifty states can draw an action from any of them, and no federal index gathers those up.
Where a company operates from a particular state, that state's office is the one with the closest interest and often the earliest record.
Where nothing is recorded
Some things simply do not appear in any of these, and it is worth naming them so an empty search is not over-read.
A private ratings organization has said that it generally does not report private lawsuits or small claims court actions on its business profiles, so a clean profile is not a clean docket.
Arbitration is largely invisible too. Where a program's terms send disputes to arbitration, the resulting proceedings do not generate a public court docket the way a lawsuit does.
State licensing discipline sits in a different system again, held by the board that issued the license rather than by any court or federal agency.
And a complaint that a regulator received but did not act on generally leaves no public trace at all. Complaint volume is not a public record in the way a case is.
A workable order of operations
Start with the entity name, from the terms of service, the privacy policy, or the name that appears on a card statement. Write it down exactly, including the suffix.
Search the consumer protection agency's case library for that name, then for the brand, because either can be the one used in a caption.
Search the federal courts by party name, and treat an empty result as covering federal courts only.
Search the drug regulator's letter index by company name, and read any close-out letter attached before drawing a conclusion.
Then check the attorney general in the state the company operates from, and in your own.
Finally, write down what you did not find and where you did not find it. An absence with a boundary around it is useful. An absence without one is just a feeling.
Sources
- Legal LibraryThat the legal library gives access to the agency's case information and other official legal, policy and guidance documents; that it holds details about court cases brought by the Commission alongside policy and guidance documents on consumer and competition topics; and that filters find documents by type.
- Legal Library: Cases and ProceedingsThat the agency brings hundreds of cases each year against individuals and companies for violating the consumer protection and competition laws it enforces, involving fraud, scams, identity theft, false advertising, privacy violations and anti-competitive behavior; that the library holds detailed information about cases brought in federal court or through the agency's internal administrative process, called an adjudicative proceeding; and that the page's record-type filters separate adjudicative proceedings, closing letters, commission letters, banned debt collectors, petitions to quash and process enforcement.
- Find a Case (PACER)That federal case files are maintained electronically and available through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records service; that anyone with an account can search appellate, district and bankruptcy court case and docket information; that a case locator supports nationwide searches to determine whether a party is involved in a federal case and updates at midnight each day; that most cases created before 1999 are maintained in paper format only; that case files may be accessed from public access terminals in the clerk's office of the court where the case was filed; and that bankruptcy courts operate a telephone information system.
- About UsThat the service is a service of the federal Judiciary whose mission is to provide the public with the broadest possible access to court records; and that the program is funded entirely through user fees set by the Judicial Conference of the United States and published in the Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule.
- Warning LettersThe standing note that matters described in warning letters may have been subject to subsequent interaction between FDA and the recipient that may have changed the regulatory status of the issues discussed, and the instruction to contact FDA for additional available information; the index columns for posted date, letter issue date, company name, issuing office, subject, response letter, close-out letter and excerpt; the filters for issuing office, letter issue date, posted date, year and letters with a response or close-out; and that agency records beyond the index are requested through the Division of Freedom of Information.
- Consumer ProtectionThat a state consumer protection division brings actions of its own and points readers to its news releases for news on the division's lawsuits and enforcement actions.
Frequently asked questions
Is there one website that shows every action against a company?
No. The records are held by different bodies and searched separately. A federal consumer protection agency publishes its own case library covering matters it brought. The federal judiciary runs an electronic records service covering appellate, district and bankruptcy courts. The drug regulator publishes a searchable index of its warning letters. State attorneys general publish their own actions on their own sites. None of these searches the others, and a state court case is in none of them. Checking one and stopping is the most common error, because an empty result in a single index reads like a clean record when it is only a narrow one.
Does a lawsuit on the docket mean a company did something wrong?
A docket records what was filed, not what was proven. A complaint is a document one party wrote setting out allegations, and the entries after it are where the case actually goes: dismissal, settlement, consolidation, judgment. Reading only the opening document is how a filing gets mistaken for a finding. Case counts are also a poor measure on their own, since a company of any size is party to filings as an ordinary condition of operating. If a case matters to your decision, the useful thing is what the last entries say, not that a first one exists.
Why can't I find a case I know exists?
Three usual reasons. The name you searched may not be the name in the caption, since a case is captioned with a legal entity rather than a consumer brand. The case may be in a state court, which the federal electronic records service does not cover — its scope is appellate, district and bankruptcy courts. Or it may predate electronic filing: most cases created before 1999 are maintained in paper format only, available from the court where the case was filed or from a federal records center. There is also a fourth possibility worth holding, which is that a dispute went to arbitration and produced no public docket at all.
Does a warning letter on the index mean the problem is still open?
It does not say either way, and the index says so itself. The standing note above the search states that matters described in warning letters may have been subject to subsequent interaction between the agency and the recipient. That interaction, it says, may have changed the regulatory status of the issues discussed, and it invites a request for additional information. The index carries columns for a response letter and a close-out letter, so where one of those is attached it is a visible sign that something followed. Where nothing is attached, the record is silent rather than negative, and the difference matters.
What does it cost to search federal court records?
The electronic records service is funded entirely through user fees, set by the policy-making body of the federal courts and published in a fee schedule, so searching and retrieving documents through an account is not free. There is a route that avoids the account: case files can be read at public access terminals in the clerk's office of the court where the case was filed. Bankruptcy courts also run a telephone information system for basic case information. For most readers the practical answer is that a quick party-name check is inexpensive and pulling a full file is not.
If I find nothing anywhere, is the company clean?
It means the indexes you searched hold nothing under the name you used, which is a narrower statement than it feels like. State court filings, arbitration proceedings, state licensing discipline, and complaints a regulator received but did not act on can all exist without appearing in any of these. The name is the other variable: a search under a consumer brand can miss everything filed against the legal entity behind it. Absence is only informative when you can say what it is an absence from, so write down which indexes you searched and under which name.