New York Official Reports
Electronic Format Guides for Submitting Trial Court Opinions
Contents:
Submissions by Judges and Members of Judges' Staff
Judges and Members of Judges' Staff.
Cases selected for print publication, as well as cases selected for online only publication, are posted directly to the Law Reporting Bureau’s website and transmitted to the Law Reporting Bureau’s commercial publisher for electronic posting immediately after processing. Given the immediacy of public access to selected opinions, we ask that all opinions be reviewed using the Privacy Guidelines before submission.
Submit each opinion as a separate email attachment, one attachment per email, to reporter@nycourts.gov. If the authoring Judge is not the person sending the opinion, he or she must be included as a recipient or carbon copy (CC:) recipient of the email message. Please do not submit opinions in the form of a letter or a transcript. Please note that the Law Reporting Bureau is unable to process opinions that contain digital signatures or opinions that are sent from the Cloud. Before submitting an opinion, remove any digital signatures and attach to your email a copy that has been saved to your hard drive or other local storage.
The subject line of the message should state: "Opinions Submitted Electronically."
For Commercial Division opinions, the subject line of the message should also include the term, "Commercial Division."
The body of the message should read as follows: "Attached hereto is the following opinion: [title of opinion], [court], [decision date], [full name of authoring judge], saved as: [name of file]."
For example: "Microsoft Corp. v State of New York, Court of Claims, September 4, 2013, Judge Jane Doe, saved as: Microsoft123.wpd."
Please include appearances of counsel with all submissions.
You may include in your email message a one-sentence "Synopsis by the Court." In the event that the opinion is selected for online publication, the synopsis may be included in the opinion "abstract" that is published in the Miscellaneous Reports and is published online with the opinion. The State Reporter may edit the synopsis to conform to editorial standards. Please submit only one synopsis per opinion and limit the length of the synopsis to 128 characters. The following are examples of a synopsis:
- "Railroad was not liable for injury sustained in trip on floor mat at station."
- "Evidence supported determination that defendant violated terms and conditions of probation."
- "Dispute between member firm and investors was subject to NASD arbitration."
- "Church was neither directly nor vicariously liable for priest's alleged misconduct."
- "Tenant was entitled to abatement for conditions in his apartment."
- "Fraud defense in action to recover first-party no-fault benefits was pleaded with sufficient specificity."
- "Insurer was precluded from asserting 'medical necessity' defense in claim to recover first-party no-fault benefits."
Please submit opinions in Microsoft Word or WordPerfect format; we are only able to process opinions that were drafted in Word or WordPerfect. Please do not apply any Protect Document options when saving in Microsoft Word: Protected Documents cannot be processed for publication. All tables must be formatted using the applicable word processing tool: Create Table in the WordPerfect menu bar; Insert > Table in the Microsoft Word ribbon.
All email correspondence from the Law Reporting Bureau will be sent to the original sender and to any recipients or carbon copy recipients (CC:) of the submission message.
Third Parties.
Anyone other than a Judge or member of their staff may submit an opinion for publication consideration as a separate email attachment, one attachment per email, to reporter@nycourts.gov. If the Reporter determines that the opinion should be published, the opinion will be authenticated and retrieved from a Unified Court System database and/or solicited from the authoring Judge in accordance with the above guidelines.