Using this parameter will search for cases where at least one defendant matches the provided search string.

What qualifies as a match?

The search is not case-sensitive. For basic text or numeric searches (i.e. those without wildcards or commas), the search will return all cases where either a defendant organization's name or a defendant individual's last name begins with the provided search string.

To search both the last and first name of a plaintiff, use a comma and a space to separate the two, putting the last name first. You must put exactly one space after the comma. If you are not using wildcards, you will need to write the entire last name before the comma, but the first name can be partial (however, it must be the beginning of the defendant's first name).

For more flexibility in searching, you may use wildcards. These are symbols that represent either a single unknown character, or an unknown number (possibly zero) of unknown characters. The underscore character ("_") can be used in place of a single unknown character and the asterisk character ("*") can be used in place of an unknown number of unknown characters. You may freely combine wildcards as needed. These wildcards are especially helpful if you aren't sure of the spelling of a name, want to search only by first name, or want to search by a part of the name that is not at the beginning.