California has 58 superior courts, one per county, and each runs its own records system. There is no statewide search. Pick the county the case was filed in.
How this tool was built: methodology and sources
Two facts drive it, and both come from the Judicial Council of California.
- There are 58 superior courts, one for each county, each operating independently as the trial court for its county. Source: California Courts.
- Case research procedures vary by county court rather than being centralised. The Judicial Council directs the public to its own Find Your Court directory to reach the correct court, which is what this tool links you to.
Why we do not hard-code 58 court website links
Individual superior courts run their own domains, and those move. Publishing a table of 58 third-party URLs we could not each verify — and could not keep verified — would be exactly the kind of confidently wrong reference this site exists to avoid. The Judicial Council’s directory is authoritative and stays current, so the tool routes you through it.
What is public and what is not
Most civil and criminal case records are presumptively public. Juvenile matters, adoptions, sealed records and records under a protective order are not, and identifiers are redacted even inside public files. A case that does not appear in a public search has not necessarily been dismissed — it may simply not be publicly accessible.
Online indexes are shallower than the file
Court portals often index only recent years. Older cases usually still exist in the court’s records and are retrievable from the clerk with names and an approximate date, sometimes from offsite storage that takes days. A record printed from a portal is also not a certified copy — anything needed for official use must be requested from the clerk of the issuing court, for a fee.
County list verified against the same source as this site’s county map and archives, 25 August 2026. This is not legal advice.