Methodology

What this platform does

CaseLawInfo assembles the public record of a legal case into a structured form: what was alleged, by whom, what a court or jury actually found, what happened on appeal, and what changed afterwards. Each material statement carries a citation to the document it came from.

It is a research aid, not a verdict. We do not decide whether anyone was guilty, wronged, or treated fairly. We surface what the record contains so a reader can see it in one place.

Which cases we cover, stated plainly

We select for matters where the public record is materially more complicated than the widely-understood account. In practice that means complex business and white-collar cases involving disputed intent, aggressive prosecution theories, prosecutorial misconduct findings, reversed convictions, later witness statements, newly discovered evidence, statutory narrowing, restitution or repayment, and sentence changes.

That is a selection criterion, and it is a thesis. We state it here rather than claiming a neutral sample we do not have. Individual records are judged on whether they represent their own record completely and accurately — not on the shape of the corpus. If a record here misstates the underlying documents, that is a defect and we want to hear about it.

How statements are labelled

Every statement carries three independent facts, shown as text on the page so the distinction survives a screen reader, a plain-text export, and a copy-paste:

• Who is speaking — a court, a jury, the prosecution, a defendant, a regulator, a witness.
• Its evidentiary standing — alleged (a party asserted it), found (a tribunal so determined), admitted, disputed, or vacated (a finding later set aside).
• Where it comes from — the official record, another publication, our own document research, or clearly-marked opinion.

A charge stays an allegation until a citation supports a finding, however widely it has been reported. A reversed finding is never left marked as found.

Sourcing requirements

A record cannot be published unless it clears an automated editorial gate. The gate requires at least one primary source, requires every established fact to rest on a primary source, requires every party claim to name the party making it, and requires each cited link to have actually resolved when we checked it. Opinion, which is rare, requires a named human author and the facts it rests on.

What absence means

Nothing is silently omitted. Every section of every record is one of three things: documented, positively established as not applicable (with the date we checked), or not yet documented. A section marked not yet documented means we have not researched it. It is never a statement that nothing happened, and it must not be read as one.

How records are produced

Records are drafted by an automated research process and reviewed by a human before publication. The automation can only create drafts — it holds no ability to publish, and every record it touches is flagged for review. Rejections are logged with their reasons, so what we declined to cover is auditable rather than invisible.

Corrections

We correct errors and record what changed. See corrections and editorial standards.