Docket Alarm is excited to announce a new search feature that makes researching damages awards and jury verdicts fast and easy.

Researching dollar amounts in litigation is a common task, as parties often seek to understand their potential financial exposure or recovery by analyzing cases similar to their own.  Previously, researching jury verdicts, damages, or other types of amounts in controversy was arduous.  Researchers needed to either go through each case one-by-one or search for language that was often used in close proximity, such as the terms “damages” or “award.” Unfortunately, manually reviewing each document is extremely time consuming, and using too many shortcuts may result in overlooking relevant documents.

Docket Alarm has solved this problem. Now, parties can quickly find publicly listed amounts in controversy in comparable cases in order to better ascertain the financial impact of litigation.

Here’s how it works: Users can now search for ranges of numbers when researching dockets. For example, entering a search query for “$5000-$6000” will return all documents containing any dollar amount within that range. 

This functionality opens a world of opportunities. For example, researchers can conduct find and compare damages awards in specific jurisdictions like the Eastern District of Texas. Searching court:(Eastern District Texas) $100000-20000000 will locate all cases with damages in in the $100,000 to $2 million range. This could be useful for parties seeking damages for patent infringement, giving them the ability to see what amounts were awarded in similar cases in that jurisdiction. This can also be helpful for users who want to track cases with a specific amount in controversy, such as litigation investors.

In addition to searching in specific jurisdictions or courts, users can also easily find the type of cash amount by searching for a numerical range in conjunction with a qualifying term, such as jury w/3 verdict $100k-$1000000. Searching for this query will find all cases with jury verdict amounts contained within that range.

Range searching is also helpful for finding monetary judgments against a particular party or individual. For example, find all of Apple’s judgments party:apple $1M-$10M.