Legal Research: Pennsylvania

Side Reports

Many, but not all of the counties in Pennsylvania publish case reporters. These generally include decisions from that county's Court of Common Pleas. These reporters usually are very selective as to which of these trial level decisions they will publish. In some of these reports a single volume will publish cases from a three or four year period. In many of the smaller counties a legal secretary, the printer, or some other person with little publishing experience will collect and edit the material. Consequently many of these reporters are not what one would consider professional products. Problems frequently encountered are the repetition of page numbers in a single volume, variations between the pagination of advance sheets and the same material in hard bound volumes, and most frequently changes in volume numbers between advance sheets and bound volumes. Thus, a case might appear in volume 12 when it is in advance sheet form and in volume 8 when the bound volume appears. It is not hard to understand why Shepards, a system built upon the concept of accurate citation, dropped coverage of the side reports in the early 1970's. West also decided to stop indexing these cases in the West Pennsylvania Digest 2d in 1976, although they still cover the District and County Reports and the Fiduciary Reporter. The District and County Reports is a compilation of what the editors feel to be the most significant decisions from the trial level courts. There are decisions reported in this set that are not published in the individual county reporters. Most of the county reporters do publish weekly advance sheets that are a combination of bar news, dockets, and court decisions. Recently, several of the Courts of Common Pleas have been loading their opinions on websites. Sometimes they are a part of a larger county website or possibly part of a local bar association site. I expect this trend to continue to grow.