Legal Question in Civil Litigation in New York

Re: Article 78

FREE and/or INEXPENSIVE legal research of court decisions is available and feasible. (The $400 price cited by

Mr. Isaacs applies to Lexis and Westlaw subscriptions used by legal professionals who make very many searches throughout the month and who thereby save money by not paying the approximately $9 per each court decision downloaded charged by Lexis plus another $6 to Shepardize each case, i.e. to find cases which quote that case and whether or not this case has been OVERRULED and is no longer good law).

As Mr. Markowitz has`stated, Supreme Court law libraries are a good idea for FREE of CHARGE legal research:

Lexis can be accessed by you (and by any other member of the public) FREE of CHARGE at any of the Supreme Court law libraries, and you can E-MAIL yourself to your own comouter, the full text of any decisions which interest you (along with the procedural history, which cases followed this decision, whther or not it is still "good law" or has been overruled) absolutely FREE of CHARGE, from the Supreme Court law libraries, and this offers a full unrestricted time range of court decisions with the search reaching to the late 18th century.

From anywhere, outside the Supreme Court law libraries:

FREE court decisons can also be downloaded from the Lexisone website; however, the Lexisone website does NOT offer Shepardization and is RESTRICTED to only the LAST FIVE YEARS of court decisions. Court decisions can also be downloaded FREE of charge from the New York State Courts website and from the Findlaw website, but each with time restrictions (though in excess of the five year maximum of Lexisone).

You can also do a FREE of CHARGE search on the Lexis website and get cases listed with short synopsis/summaries according to your search criteria; you have the option of downloading any of the full tests of these decisions by paying Lexis $9 with your credit card (plus an additional $6 to Shepardize that decision, i.e., provide the subsequent history of that case), totalling $15 per decision. Westlaw offers a similar option to download individual cases by paying for each by credit card.

These searches offer a full unrestricted time range of court decisions with the searches reaching to the late 18th century.

For further useful information you may want to read my answer on this LawGuru site in the New York state category Family Law, Divorce, Child Custody and Adoption Law, posted 6/24/06, the question titled "information".

If you contact my law office as to the specifics of your research, I may be able to provide you with some court decisions to get you off and running at a good start. (My telephone voicemail and e-mail can be accessed by my listing on the ATTORNEY PROFILE link of this LawGuru website.

Re: Article 78

You can research decisions on-line through either westlaw or lexisnexis. If you do not want to spend money, you can go to your local Supreme Court law library, open free to the public.

Mike.

Re: Article 78

I highly recommend that you do NOT perform legal research on your own.

First of all, the only place to get a true, comprehensive index of cases on a subject would be on Westlaw or Lexis, each of which costs at least $400.00 per month. Secondly, finding the appropriate decisions and reading and understanding them is an art in and of itself.

It's not much different from trying to interpret a medical chart.

I suspect this is not what you wanted to hear but best of luck in any case.