Maryland Case Search

This is an update to a posting by Andy Zimmerman from March of '06 on the Maryland Judiciary Case Search. Since that posting, the system has undergone a number of improvements. First, at that time we mentioned that the system provided only skeletal information about a case. That has since changed. Almost every docket that I've seen now contains a full case history. Second, we mentioned that back in '06 Montgomery and Prince George's counties did not exist on the system. That too has changed. The system now contains docket information for Montgomery County Circuit Court (civil back to 1978 and criminal back to 1979) and criminal dockets for Prince George's County Circuit Court back to 1982. Unfortunately, civil case docket information is still not available for Prince George's County. For a detailed listing of what information is available on the system, see the FAQ page.

Office of Foreign Assets Control Search

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a part of the US Teasury, enforces sanctions against countries and individuals involved in terrorism and drugs. Following 9/11, it has become increasingly common for businesses doing deals with foreign nationals to run an "OFAC Search." Generally, this involves checking whether the names of the individuals or businesses appear in OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list which is updated regularly. To run a search, download the PDF version of the list and then run a "find" using Acrobat's search feature. The SDN list is also available on Westlaw but, from what I've been able to determine, there doesn't seem to be any clear benefit using their database over the free version.