Court Researcher How To

NEWS ANALYSIS Court rules for NIH in stem cell case

Last week Wednesday, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dealt a decisive victory to the NIH. Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled in favor of the NIH and human embryonic stem cell (hESC) researchers. The losers were adult stem cell researchers James L. Sherley and Theresa A. Deisher, who had argued that government funding of human embryonic stem cell research violated a congressional appropriations rider (the Dickey-Wicker amendment) that bans funding “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed.”

The case has twisted in and out of court several times since it was first filed almost two years ago on Aug. 19, 2009. Sherley and Deisher sued the NIH, but there were several additional co-plaintiffs: including Nightlight Christian Adoptions (“individually and as next friend for Plaintiff Embryos”), Christian Medical Association, and, in a bizarre legal maneuver, “embryos” themselves.

Sherley is a former MIT professor who now works at the Boston Biomedical Institute in Watertown. He was denied tenure by MIT by the Department of Biomedical Engineering in December 2004, engaged in a dispute process with the Institute in 2005 and 2006, and then threatened and executed a hunger strike in 2007 before leaving MIT. Sherley, who is black, alleged racial discrimination on the part of his department and senior Institute officials.

The case was initially dismissed on Oct. 27, 2009. Lamberth ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing — that they were not actually harmed by the government’s funding of embryonic stem cell research, so they lacked the right to sue. Sherley, Deisher, and the others appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and there it sat, quietly, for half a year. Most scientists who had paid some attention to the case forgot about it, and apparently so did the NIH. It was utterly unprepared for what happened next.

On June 25, 2010, the Appeals Court partially reversed Lamberth’s dismissal. It ruled that “the Doctors” — Sherley and Deisher — indeed did have standing, though the other plaintiffs (including the adoption agency and the embryos themselves) did not. The court found that Sherley and Deisher faced increased competition for research funding — despite the fact that Deisher had not then and still has not applied for NIH funding. The case was remanded back to Lamberth’s court for further consideration.

But no one seemed to pay attention. Because of a court clerical error, notice of the appeal’s court decision did not appear in the district court’s docket until Aug. 19, 2010. This meant anyone who was following the case only at the district level did not know of the appeal’s court’s decision — though anyone paying attention to the appeal’s court’s docket would have seen it.

Making Money As A Court Researcher

I am not an attorney, I am a judgment referral expert (Judgment Broker). This article is my opinion on how to make more income as a court records researcher, or for anyone who comes in contact with civil court records in their line of work.

There are two ways to find civil court records. One method is to use a court's web site, and the other way is to visit the court in person. Each court is different, some court web sites are free and give you everything, others charge or give you almost nothing. Some courts charge a fee to park, and to look up records, and some are free.

When viewing court files online, you can locate leads in any location When viewing leads in person, you must be there at the court.

Traditionally, court researchers worked for title reporting entities, credit reporting entities, and old-school judgment lead provider entities. These opportunities are limited as there are few new opportunities with these "old-school" court record research companies.

There are 3 new reasons to research court records, for they can be of value to judgment brokers, debt settlers, and bankruptcy lawyers.

For judgment brokers (or judgment recovery specialists or judgment lead companies), one can look at post-judgment court records and look for judgments that have not been satisfied, vacated, dismissed, already assigned, etc. There is a lot more criteria one must check for. Also, one might have to to skip-trace the judgment debtors and creditors, there are many articles on this subject.

Debt settlement companies are always looking for both post and pre-judgment leads. The value of locating a pre-judgment (current litigation) lead is that a settler might help the creditor and debtor settle out of court, saving the costs and hassles of continuing the lawsuit.

Most often debt settlers are looking for business to business judgments, where one entity owes money to another. These can be pre-judgment or post judgment leads. These might need to be checked to make sure the entities are still in business. Non-business pre and post-judgment (consumer) leads might also be of interest to some debt settlers.

Another reason to look at pre-judgment (current litigation) leads is for bankruptcy lawyers. Many defendants can save money going bankrupt to avoid pending litigation. Many bankruptcy attorneys are looking for leads and defendants in court cases might be good leads.

Remember that I am not an attorney. Attorneys generally cannot pay for referrals from non lawyers, but there may be a way a an attorney can hire you or compensate you in some way. I leave this to the reader, and remind readers to not confuse any article of mine as being in any way related to legal advice.

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