“The Paralegal Sleuth”

 

by Sheila Berry, Paralegal at ThompsonMcMullan

 

The story of Little Blue Riding Hood is true. Only the color has been changed to prevent an investigation. –Stan Freberg

            When we think of investigators, we think of police detectives, private investigators, or, given the popularity of television shows like CSI, forensic specialists. Although litigation paralegals are unlikely to make the average person’s list of investigators at all, professional investigators recognize the unique skills paralegals bring to the process of uncovering information vital to any court case.

            Paralegals don’t go undercover, drive squad cars, carry handcuffs and guns, or examine minute specks of physical evidence through electron microscopes. They work from their desks, tracking facts and leads in documents. Their tools are highlighter pens, post-it flags, a magnifying glass for hen-scratch handwriting and 8-point-font type, a computer connected to the internet, and a telephone. In the broadest terms, paralegals find people (as well as find out about people) and they find facts, although there is constant overlap in the process. Keeping that overlap in mind, let’s look first at finding people.

Finding People

            Finding people is the first and most essential investigative task undertaken by paralegals. A lawsuit can’t be served if the defendant can’t be located, and a case can’t be prosecuted or defended if key witnesses can’t be found.

            There are a lot of fee-based people-search services on the internet, but only three that provide reasonably reliable results: Lexis, WestLaw and Accurint. Lexis and WestLaw offer people-search services with certain subscription packages. (If public records are not included in your subscription, there is an extra charge each time you use it.) Because the firm where I work has a Lexis subscription, I am more familiar with the public records search utilities Lexis offers. WestLaw offers a litigation package with similar features.

            Lexis SmartLinx offers three types of SmartLinx reports: Person, Location and Business. The term “Linx” is used to indicate that these reports, which are summaries drawn from numerous sources, are “linked” in ways most likely to be helpful to litigators. A typical Person Report includes sub-reports in a variety of areas: Subject Summary, Others Using SSN, Address Summary, Voter Registration, Personal Property, Real Property, Bankruptcies, Judgments & Liens, Relatives, Associated Entities, Neighbors, Employment, Marriages and Divorces, as well as a list of sources from which the summary is drawn. A hyperlink (blue, underlined text) indicates the report contains information in that category.

            The SmartLinx Person Summary is a helpful information filter. For example, real property listings can be checked at the real estate and land records information websites widely available for most counties and cities around the country. (Hint: When you’re trying to locate the person, check to see where the tax bill is sent. The person you’re seeking will more likely be found at the tax bill address.) 

Judgments and liens can be confirmed with the courts where they are recorded, or, in the case of UCC liens, with the state’s corporation registry office. Many courts around the country provide such information online. Maryland, Washington, Alaska, New Mexico and Wisconsin are among several states that offer a single, statewide search gateway. Colorado has a central gateway, but requires registration and charges for access. Other states offer court information in a patchwork approach, with some jurisdictions online and others requiring telephone calls or even in-person visits. Not surprisingly, courts that allow online prepayment of fines have easy-to-find, user-friendly websites.

Bankruptcy information is particularly valuable when you are seeking financial information in anticipation of suits to collect debts. Compare the dates of filing and discharge to the date the debt was incurred. Use Pacer, the program for online access to federal court records, to obtain information regarding U.S. District Court and Bankruptcy Court cases. The cost is nominal, 8¢ per document. Pacer requires pre-registration, which is not difficult. 

The corporation registry offices of 48 states offers access to information via the internet free of charge, with gateway access at www.residentagentinfo.com. These are excellent sources for cross-checking information from Lexis and for original research regarding businesses The two states that charge a fee for corporate information online are Indiana and New Jersey. If you telephone the Indiana Secretary of State’s office—you pay the toll, of course—you can get basic information such as registered agent for free. New Jersey charges a minimum of $5.00 regardless how the inquiry is made. 

Licensing information released to databases differs from state to state, but can include driver’s licenses, vehicle licensing, voter registration and professional licenses. Look for expiration dates for driver’s and vehicle licenses to determine if the address is current or “old news.” Voter registration data usually includes the last date the subject voted, which serves as a “filter” similar to expiration dates. When you find a professional license listed in the SmartLinx summary, cross-reference it using the online license lookup at the licensing authority. This, in turn, may give you the person’s employment name and address. 

            Associated Entities is a mixed bag. Sometimes this is a short list of the person’s creditors or people the subject has sold real estate to or purchased real estate from. However, businesses in which the person has a substantial interest are also listed here. Click through to the source report, which will provide additional information about the business (including the corporate identification number) and the subject’s role in it. Check the website for the state corporate registry to see if copies of annual reports are available online. These reports may include addresses of corporate officers. I have found the home addresses of several witnesses this way, so that they could be served subpoenae and other process. 

            The lists of potential relatives are often inaccurate; after all, the key word here is “potential.” Yet they are worth careful review, because they can yield important information. These lists can confirm that you’ve found the subject you’re seeking, or provide alternate ways to get in touch with witnesses you haven’t been able to find.

            There is one more section offered by Lexis, under Public Records generally, that I have found useful in finding people, and that is Criminal History. Some states contribute only criminal convictions, while others provide these databases with traffic and criminal matters, including those that have been dismissed. All, however, tell you which court the case was filed in. If you are searching for criminal history information about a person in a state that has a separate website for each court, you don’t have time to look at every court website for the state. Lexis criminal history lets you know where to look. The results of a criminal history search can indicate if you should subpoena the subject’s certified criminal record or the driver’s record from the appropriate records custodians. A criminal history search may also send you to http://www.theinmatelocator.com/ for an inmate search. If your witness is in prison, you need to know!

            A down side is the error rates of Lexis SmartLinx and Westlaw Litigator. The more common the name, the higher the error rate. For example, of the 50 potential relatives listed for Sheila Berry, only one—my husband—is a member of my family. That is why cross-checking search results with other public records is so important. Moreover, subscriptions for Lexis with SmartLinx and for Westlaw Litigator are very expensive. If you work for a small firm, these may be outside the budget. 

            There is an alternative, a subscription service that provides information similar to Lexis SmartLinx. It costs less because it doesn’t include all the legal research features of Lexis and Westlaw. That service is Accurint (www.accurint.com). Lexis purchased Accurint in 2004, but offers stand-alone subscriptions. The current monthly subscription charge starts around $150; actual cost depends on how many licenses and which databases are included in the subscription. 

You may be thinking that there must be a catch, and there is. The application process is rigorous. Your firm will have to provide a great deal of documentation regarding who will use Accurint and under what security conditions. An Accurint representative may make a personal visit to confirm the security arrangements. Accurint puts very sensitive information into the hands of its users, and must ensure this will not be abused. Is it worth it for a litigation practice to go through this process? Absolutely.

Is there another search gateway that is free and produces reasonably reliable information? Black Book Online (www.blackbookonline.info) meets these criteria. It is an online version of The Investigator’s Little Black Book 3, a resource now in its fifth printing on which both private and public investigators have relied for years. Black Book Online offers links to Social Security Number Validator, Reverse Lookups, Phone Directories, State Records, Zaba Search, Mail Drops, Businesses, News Search, Death Records, Skip Trace, Bank Records, Non-Profits, Aviation, Vessels and Other Unique Searches incl. Military Gravesite Locator, Do Not Call Registry, Interpol Most Wanted, Salary Calculator, and much more. Even if you have subscription services like Lexis SmartLinx or Westlaw Litigator, as well as Accurint, you will want to book mark Black Book Online. 

There are three websites that should already be familiar to you that are “essentials” when you are looking for people: Google.com, MapQuest.com, and USPS.com. Google is, from my perspective, the best, most effective search engine on the internet. Never underestimate the information you can find with some well-formulated key words at Google.com. In a plaintiff’s case my firm handled, we had been searching high and low for an eyewitness, with no luck. He was a college student, and he had not yet been picked up by the subscription databases that rely on credit reports. But when I searched his name at Google, I found him immediately. He had posted an online ad to sell his bike and had listed his telephone number.

Google’s maps are great, especially if you would like to see ground level photographs of the area you’re looking for, with 360° rotation. But there are situations when I prefer MapQuest.com, for example, when I want a traditional map clearly displaying the boundaries of a zip code, city, county or similar jurisdiction. Both mapping services provide the exact distance between the points mapped. USPS.com’s zip code finder will give you the jurisdiction in which an address is located (click on Mailing Industry Information), and if the address does not exist, USPS.com will tell you that, too.

GetHuman.com is a new addition to the investigative toolbox. It is a response to the exploding use of telephone menus designed to keep callers from reaching a human being. The website features a database of secret telephone numbers and menu codes to get a human when calling consumer companies (e.g., insurance, credit cards, banks and mortgagors, telephone and cell phone providers, etc.). GetHuman.com also offers some valuable tips, first, on how to find telephone numbers of companies that do not want their numbers found, and then, how to get a human once you dial the number.  

Finding Facts

            You can pile your desk high with documents and strain your eyes reading them, but unless you understand the records, the effort will be wasted. Just ten years ago, understanding technical records meant maintaining an extensive collection of reference books, making trips to libraries, or both. Now, we can save wear and tear by finding facts that help us understand these records, online. As an added bonus, the information we uncover is more current because the internet is designed for quick updating.

            There are few litigation practice areas in which medical records don’t play some role. This is self-evident in personal injury, wrongful death and medical and dental malpractice cases. But this is also true in less obvious practice areas, such as employment, civil rights, and domestic relations. 

Medical records offer a lot of challenges from the outset. They are usually in reverse chronological order, and if you think best in chronological order, sort them from earliest to most recent before beginning your review. Handwritten notes can be nearly indecipherable—after all, these are written by the same people whose prescription pad scribbles even stump pharmacists. The computer medical notes programs intended to eliminate this problem generate another one—page after redundant page of the same notes, distinguished only by the identity of the person generating them. The nurse’s notes are the same as the doctor’s notes, which are the same as the registration data entered by the receptionist. In all the sameness, it is easy to miss a phrase or sentence that is different, and pivotal.

            You probably know that the “SOAP” method for medical notes has been widely adopted. S stands for Subjective, O for Objective, A for Assessment and P for Plan. But when all you see next to A or in a box labeled “Diagnosis” is a number—the ICD-9 diagnosis and procedure code—you no longer have to consult a printed manual to decipher it. ICD-9 codes are now available online at www.eicd.com/EICDMain.htm from Yaki Technologies, free of charge. Medical abbreviations are another type of “code” used by the healing professions that are puzzling to laymen. 

            Decoding codes, abbreviations and acronyms is half the battle. The other half is understanding diagnostic and other medical terms. The University of Newcastle on Tyne offers a comprehensive medical dictionary, free of charge, at cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/omd/. Although the server is in England, the dictionary is only a few keystrokes away. Medtronic’s website provides sound files so you can go to www.imgsrv.com/glossary/ and hear how to pronounce those tongue-twister medical terms. 

            Medications noted in patient records can provide important clues, but you need to know the difference between sound-alike drugs, and to understand the indications and effects of the medication. For example, Clonidine sounds a lot like Klonopine, but there is a world of difference between the two. Clonidine is used to treat high blood pressure, while Klonopine is an anti-seizure medication. In order to understand the implications of medications found in the records, you need to know the basic clinical pharmacology, indications and dosage, side effects and drug interactions, and warnings and precautions for each. Was a witness taking a medication that alters perception? Was the plaintiff taking an arthritis drug before the car accident occurred? RxList.com offers comprehensive listings of prescription and non-prescription medications.

            When the indications for a drug seem at odds with the diagnosis, do a Google search for the medication to look for “off-label” uses. “Off-label” means a doctor has prescribed a medication for an indication not in the approved labeling. The label use for Klonopine, for example, is for seizure disorders. However, it is widely prescribed “off-label” for anxiety and panic disorder.

            Astronomical and meteorological data can be important to cases in litigation, too. Was it light or dark? Was the moon full or new? Was there enough light for the witness to see what he says he saw? Did the defendant’s car hit a patch of ice, or was it too warm for ice to form?

            The U.S. Naval Observatory Data Services (aa.usno.navy.mil/data/) provide complete sun and moon data for one day for cities and towns in the United States and its territories, plus similar data for selected locations outside the U.S. How far back do the data go? Far enough that I was able to obtain the sun and moon data for the day I was born, over sixty years ago. If the sun and moon data plays so important a role in your case that your attorney wishes the court to take judicial notice of it, you can obtain certified copies from the U.S. Naval Observatory. Contact information for this is on the website.

            At Weather Underground’s website (www.wunderground.com/), you can find out everything you need to know about the weather at almost any U.S. location (or at the airport nearest to it) for any date from January 1, 1970 to the present. The website, in fact, offers so much information that it is easy to become confused when attempting to find weather in one place on a particular date. Type the airport code or the zip code into the search box at the top of Weather Underground’s home page and press “Enter.” That takes you to the weather page for the locality in which you are interested. Then scroll down to “History & Almanac,” choose the date you want and click “Go.” Certified copies of weather data can be obtained from the National Climatic Data Center, and contact information for ordering is on the Center’s website. at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/

            But what if you need to “decode” an airport code, that is, to find out where in the world KBOI is? Aircraft Charter World’s website (www.aircraft-charter-world.com/airports/) has that information, for every airport in the world. By visiting this website, you will learn that KBOI is the Boise, Idaho airport.

            The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website (www.nhtsa.dot.gov/) makes available traffic safety data and statistics, vehicle recalls, and related information.  If you suspect a vehicle defect but no recall is listed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, check the service bulletins by make, model and year listed at the Auto Channel website. Issues that do not warrant a recall but may be a factor in a crash are often found in service bulletins. Along similar lines, SafeRoadMaps.org, a project of the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety, allows users to see maps of all the fatal accidents in a given area. Users can narrow their search to determine the age of the driver, whether speed or drinking were factors, even if the driver wore a seatbelt.

Is there a “gateway” site for finding facts that is as comprehensive and useful as Black Book Online is for finding people? Fortunately for all of us, there is: ClaimsPages.com. Designed with insurance claims adjusters in mind, paralegals will find it constantly useful. There is a flow conversion calculator, weight conversion calculator, OSHA workplace accidents and inspections data, Manufacturers Index Code (MIC) database, VIN decoder, as well as links to many of the resources we have discussed here individually. There is even a link to Black Book Online. The monthly newsletter, delivered by e-mail, is free and informative. If you could bookmark only one website, ClaimsPages.com would be it. 

            When I began working in law, the biggest innovations in our office were correcting typewriters and photocopiers. Most research required a trip to the city library, law library or the medical library. Once you got there, the effectiveness of your efforts was limited by whether the texts you consulted were up-to-date, and, in turn, the texts were limited to what was available at press time. Your ability to look up technical terms was directly dependent on your ability to spell them correctly. People who did not want to be found, could not be found. 

            The “Information Age” has brought changes as dramatic as going from the horse and buggy to the jet airplane—in the span of a decade. Use the tips we have discussed here and the “starting point” URLs to begin your own navigation of cyberspace. You will soon discover that there is a world of information, literally at your fingertips.

 

 

pacer.psc.uscourts.gov

ICD-9 Codes: www.eicd.com/EICDMain.htm

Online Medical Dictionary: cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/omd/

All About Medications: www.rxlist.com

Astronomical Data: aa.usno.navy.mil/data/

Meteorological Data: www.wunderground.com

Order meteorological data certified for use in court: www.ncdc.noaa.gov

Airport Codes: www.aircraft-charter-world.com/airports/

Traffic safety data, vehicle recalls: www.nhtsa.dot.gov

Fatal accidents in user-specified locations: www.SafeRoadMaps.org

Facts and Data Gateway: www.ClaimsPages.com