Search the PACER Case Locator (PCL) for federal civil cases by defendant company name and retrieve docket metadata
domain: pacer.uscourts.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Obtain a valid X-NEXT-GEN-CSO authentication token from the PACER Authentication API
Construct a GET request to the PCL API search endpoint, passing the party name, case type filter, and desired court as query parameters per the PCL API User Guide
Include the X-NEXT-GEN-CSO token in the request header of every PCL API call
Iterate through paginated results using the page and pageSize parameters until all matching cases are returned
For each returned case, record the caseId, court identifier, case number, and party list for use in downstream PACER or CourtListener lookups
Known gotchas
The PCL indexes federal cases nationwide but individual court CM/ECF systems hold the actual docket entries; the PCL result gives you the case identifier needed to query the specific court
Searches are billed under standard PACER fees once the result set exceeds the free quarterly exemption threshold
Party name matching is inexact; use the legalNameSearch parameter carefully and verify results against returned case titles before processing at scale
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