ECourts & NYSCEF (New York State Courts Electronic Filing System)

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-Presented by Housing Court Answers

Monique M. and Nipa H.

What is eCourts?

• ECourts contains cases from all of the courts in New York State. Today we’ll be focusing on Housing Court cases. WebCivil Local is the specific tab that can be used to determine if you have a court date scheduled for civil cases including Nonpayment, Holdover & HP Action cases.

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• WebCivil Supreme can be used to look up Supreme Court cases.

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How to search for a Non-payment or Holdover case:

• Go to: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/ecourtsMain

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• Select WebCivil Local. You may select Index search if you have the index number for the case. You may select Party search if you don’t have the index number and need to search by name.

Select the type of case you’re searching for in the 1st drop down. LT (Landlord & Tenant) is for Housing Court cases.

Select the county of the case you’re searching for in the last drop down.

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BX-Bronx HA-Harlem KI-Brooklyn NY-Manhattan QU-Queens RI-Staten Island

If there is a court date scheduled, you will be led to this screen which will provide a snapshot of the hearing information:

Click on the Index Number to get to this screen:

Click on Show All Appearances to see all previous and current court hearing dates:

If there is no court date, you will see this screen.

If no cases are found, it does not mean that no case has been filed.

What is NYSCEF?

• NYSCEF is a program used to view documents that have been filed for a court case. NYSCEF also permits the filing of legal papers by electronic means. Existing cases with hard copy filings that are eligible for e-filing can also be converted to NYSCEF. 

How to search for a case on NYSCEF:��

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Start by opening the following link: �https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/HomePage

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Search as Guest:

You can search for a housing court case 2 ways:

1) Name (Enter name as it appears on court papers)�2) Index Number (6 digits plus the 2 digits for the year)

BX-Bronx HA-Harlem KI-Brooklyn NY-Manhattan QU-Queens RI-Staten Island

Name Search

Look for cases that say LT (Landlord and Tenant). NYSCEF has different types of court cases. Supreme, etc.)

If no cases are found, you will get this result:

*This does not mean you do not have a court case!

You can see if either party has representation by clicking on the Case Detail tab:

Holdover Petition

Non-payment Petition

Affidavit of Service

Judgment

Stipulation

Hand Written Stipulation

Order To Show Cause

Order To Show Cause (continued)

Notice of Motion

Warrant Requisition

Some Landlords will file eviction cases in Supreme Court as certain cases cannot be handled by Housing Court. Some Supreme Court case can result in eviction (for example ejectment actions). Supreme Court has very different procedures than Housing Court.

You can search for Supreme Court cases using: 1)Name-as entered on the court documents 2)Index Number- 6 digits plus full year case was filed

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IMPORTANT!

• Just because a case is not found in NYSEF does not mean a case has not been filed!
• A case must be electronically filed or converted in order for it to appear in NYSEF. (Small landlords and pro-se tenants often do not file electronically and therefore the cases may not be found in the system.)
• Even if the cases are filed electronically, there may be a limited amount of documents, depending on how quickly court uploads them.
• Notice of Eviction or the Marshal’s Notice are generally not uploaded in the system. A Warrant Requisition is not the same thing as a Marshal's notice, however, does contain the Marshal’s contact information.

Our hotline is open Monday through Friday, 9 to 5pm. Call 212-962-4795�HousingCourtAnswers.org moniquem@hcanswers.org�Check out our events page for more trainings! https://www.youtube.com/c/housingcourtanswers

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