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Federal Judiciary

Utah District Court Blog

This blog contains current public information regarding the Utah District Court CM/ECF Electronic Filing System. This blog is informal and unofficial.

Post Frequency: 2/day

Last Entry: January 06, 2010 at 18:13:00

Netscape Browser Support Ends

Posted on February 10, 2008
"Official support for all Netscape client products will end on March 1st, 2008, according to Netscape's website. The official announcement states development work ended February 1st. "We'll continue to release security patches for the current version of the browser, Netscape Navigator until February 1, 2008...

CM/ECF 3.1 is Up in Utah

Posted on February 02, 2008
The team at the District of Utah has completed installation of CM/ECF 3.1.2. This notice appears on the CM/ECF page:The new version has a distinctive look -- cascading menus are the most prominent:Testing will continue through the weekend.Users will notice that they need to use Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer to work with this version of CM/ECF.

Very Large Filings

Posted on January 25, 2008
The court recently received two very large electronic filings. Each of the documents was nearly 35 inches by 45 inches! Apparently the system does not check for document physical dimensions.Of course, Acrobat scales the document so you can see it on screen, but the header applied by CM/ECF almost vanishes, it is so smallcompared to the type in the document itself...

Boldly Going . . . . to CM/ECF Version 3.1

Posted on January 24, 2008
The District of Utah will move to CM/ECF version 3.1 on February 2.Implications:file Friday February 1st as the system will be down on the 2nd for installation (see the court's home page for more specific information);filings made SuperBowl Sunday will use the new 3...

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Feeling rejected?

Posted on January 15, 2008
If your PDF is rejected, it may be for one of several reasons. The most frequent is violation of the 3 megabye size limit per PDF file, set in the Administrative Procedures II. C. 2.In the court, we use Lotus Notes, which gets a Print to PDF button when you install Acrobat Standard...

Appellate Courts Move to CM/ECF

Posted on January 02, 2008
According to the Federal Court Management Report for December 2007, the Eighth Circuit is leading as Courts of Appeal move to CM/ECF."The Eighth Circuit began accepting most attorney-filed documents using ECF in June 2007. In less than six months, the court registered over 5,000 attorneys and has had nearly 2,000 attorneys file documents in ECF...

PDF Issues

Posted on November 28, 2007
The court sees strange PDF files occasionally, most often letter size pages scanned to legal size format, making a long blank space at the foot of the page. Sometimes pages are scanned upside down, or sideways. A recent filing had an issue never seen before...

Keylogging Update

Posted on November 21, 2007
The threat of keylogging continues and CM/ECF users are not immune. According to a recent internal memo, over 100 PACER and several dozen CM/ECF filer accounts have been compromised by keyloggers this year nationwide. The keylogging is due to hidden software on the computer of the PACER or CM/ECF filer...

Computer Malfunctions

Posted on November 21, 2007
Recent documents filed in court reveal the unfortunate consequences of our reliance on computers.One filing detailed the loss of a document in process which necessitated the extension of a filing deadline. The filer fortunately had a recent backup so the problem was not as severe as it might have been...

AcrobatDigital Signatures and CM/ECF

Posted on October 29, 2007
Adobe Acrobat's handy and cool digital signature tool runs into trouble in CM/ECF. The Acrobat digital signature certifies that the docuent is authentic and unmodified since the time the signature is attached. But when CM/ECF attaches a header, the document is modified -- causing the signature to display an error code...

The New Look of CM/ECF 3.1

Posted on October 27, 2007
Among new features in CM/ECF version 3.1 is cascading menus. Like the Windows Start menu which branches into sub-menus, the CM/ECF 3.1 menus let you navigate further without moving through so many screens.

Faulty PDF Redacting Whacks FTC

Posted on August 15, 2007
Unfortunate FTC lawyers failed to use proper redacting techniques for a PDF filing in a court case (1:07-cv-01021-PLF - District of Columbia District Court) filed against Whole Foods proposed purchase of Wild Oats. As is the case with faulty PDF redactions, "the words looked redacted but were actually just electronically shaded black...

Failure to Whitelist Court NEF EMails Not Justified

Posted on July 30, 2007
A judge in Colorado has sanctioned lawyers for failure to appear at a settlement conference. Their excuse was that they did not receive notice through CM/ECF -- but that was because their IT staff failed to whitelist the email domain from which Notices of Electronic Filing are sent...

Steady Progress on E-filer Percentages

Posted on July 24, 2007
The district continues to make steady progress on reducing the number of non e-filers. Non e-filers require paper notice and impose signficant scanning duties on the court staff. E-filers complain that it is very inconvenient to have a case with a non e-filer because of paper service is required for that attorney...

New Tool Eases E-mail to Counsel

Posted on June 27, 2007
The District of Utah recently added a new tool to CM/ECF for users inside and outside court. It allows easy access to all email addresses in use in a case. The tool is found in UTILITIES, MAILINGS, MAILING INFO FOR A CASE. The screen that appears has all the notice information for a case...

Case Evaporates When E-Filer Fails to File Complaint

Posted on June 14, 2007
An attorney recently suffered the indignity of being the first to have a case number forfeited for failure to electronically submit a complaint. Current Utah CM/ECF procedures allow counsel to submit information in advance of a complaint filing so that a case number may be reserved and a case opened to receive an electronically filed complaint...

Non Delivery of NEF Requires Evidentiary Hearing

Posted on June 14, 2007
An article in the Computer Law Review and Technology Journal analyzes an Eighth Circuit decision holding that a lower court should have considered evidence to rebut the presumption of delivery for a Notice of Electronic Filing. The court held that affidavits presented raised issues of fact that entitled the appellant to an evidentiary hearing...

Notice of Conventional Filing Does Not "Reserve" Filing Date

Posted on March 05, 2007
Judge Kimball recently revealed that an attorney was using an e-filed Notice of Conventional Filing to "bookmark" a spot on the docket; stamping document caption pages at the all-night filing box outside the court; and then returning to the court days later to actually deposit the documents in the all-night filing box using the caption cover pages stamped days earlier...

Emailing is Not E-filing

Posted on February 15, 2007
On February 8th, the Tenth Circuit made it clear that emailing is not the same as efiling. The court dismissed the appeal in Le Williamson v. Deluxe Financial, Case No. 05-3312 even thought the Appellant attempted to email a notice of appeal to the clerk...

Data Mining Illustrated

Posted on February 13, 2007
As reported in http://www.bespacific.com, Justia has launched a powerful list of many recent court filings, including data mined from Utah's CM/ECF system. (click image to enlarge)Besides presenting lists of recent court filings, and direct links to PACER, Justia allows a user to search national court filings for parties or case types...

Sealed Civil Motion Docket Entries Will Appear on the Docket

Posted on February 08, 2007
The Civil Sealed Motion has been changed from a sealed ENTRY to a sealed DOCUMENT. This means that a Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) will go out to all counsel, but the document itself will only be available to limited court staff. Since the Sealed Motion docket entry will appear on the docket, attorneys will now be able to e-file related documents (memorandums in opposition, replies, etc) and link them to the sealed motion...

Release 3.1 Set for Summer 2007

Posted on February 07, 2007
CM/ECF version 3.1, which will have many features of interest to chambers and lawyer users, is scheduled for release in June 2007. Among the new features in this version are hyperlinks between documents in a docket. and the ability to print multiple documents...

Percentage of Attorney E-Filings Plateaus

Posted on February 05, 2007
For the past nine months, attorney e-filings have been 30-35% of total court filings. It appears that the percentage of documents filed by attorneys has plateaued at that range. As mentioned previously in this blog, there are many items which cannot be filed by counsel, including notices, minute entries, writs, sealed papers, orders and judgments, and pro se and prisoner papers...

More E-Filer Registrations

Posted on February 05, 2007
At the end of 2006, the court removed all old email addresses for persons who are not registered e-filers. Many have registered as e-filers simply by virtue of that change, and in some cases, the court has taken a more active role. These file entries show one process that has been followed...

A New Look in CM/ECF Version 3.1

Posted on February 02, 2007
District CM/ECF Release 3.1 includes several user interface enhancements to improve common functions, including a new cascading menu system and streamlined case selection.While it is not as radical as Windows Vista, the cascading menus are a step forward for usability...

Audio Recordings to Be Posted on Trial Basis?

Posted on February 02, 2007
At the March 2007 Judicial Conference a proposal will be considered to endorse a pilot project for 6 to 12 months to allow digital audio recordings to be accessible through CM/ECF and to make those audio files available to the public through PACER. Whether audio recordings of court hearings will be available on PACER is therefore at least two years away.

Pay.gov Will Require Security Code

Posted on December 28, 2006
Beginning February 1, 2007, all district and bankruptcy court CM/ECF users that pay fees through the Pay.gov system will be required to complete the security code field to complete the transaction. The security enhancement was implemented after an erroneous credit card charge appeared on an individual?s statement...

District Upgrade To Version 3.0 To Start New Year

Posted on December 28, 2006
The District of Utah will upgrade to Version 3.0 of CM/ECF to start the new year. Users will see changes to Notices of Electronic Filing and to initial information screens. Watch the court's CM/ECF newsletter for more details.Because of the upgrade, CM/ECF will be unavailable Friday, December 29, 2006 from 5:00 a...

Acrobat 8 Includes Redacting and Bates Numbering

Posted on December 07, 2006
An article by Brett Burney on law.com discusses new features in Acrobat 8, including redaction and Bates numbers. Redaction was previously discussed in this blog.

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