How to Look Up a California Court Case by County

There is no single statewide search box for California court records. The state has 58 superior courts, one for each county, and each runs its own system. Finding a case means knowing which county it was filed in and then using that court’s own portal.

Start with the county, not the state

Each superior court operates independently as the trial court for its county. Case research procedures vary by county court rather than being centralised, so the first question is always which county heard the matter — generally where the defendant lives or does business, or where the events happened.

The Judicial Council’s Find Your Court directory is the reliable way to reach the right court’s site.

What varies between counties

Expect differences in nearly everything operational: whether there is an online portal at all, how far back the index goes, whether documents can be viewed online or only the docket, what a copy costs, and whether remote access requires registration. Two neighbouring counties can behave completely differently.

What is public and what is not

Most civil and criminal case records are presumptively public, but a substantial set is not. Juvenile matters, adoptions, sealed records, and records with a protective order are restricted, and even in public files certain identifiers are redacted. A case that does not appear in a public search has not necessarily been dismissed — it may simply not be publicly accessible.

If the online index does not have it

Online indexes often cover only recent years. Older cases usually still exist in the court’s own records, retrievable by contacting the clerk with names and an approximate date, or by visiting a public terminal at the courthouse. Some older files are held offsite and take days to retrieve.

Certified copies

A record printed from a portal is not a certified copy. Anything you need for official use — proof of a judgment, a dissolution, a name change — has to be requested from the clerk of the court that issued it, for a fee.

A caution about aggregator sites

Commercial sites that sell “court record searches” resell data that is often stale, incomplete or mismatched between people with similar names. The county court’s own portal is authoritative; those sites are not.

Portals, fees and coverage differ by county and change. Confirm with the superior court for the county in question.