Doppelganger cases with no available documents (was: "ECF docket number parsed wrong in Swartz")

[freelawbot]

Issue by johnhawkinson
Monday Jun 10, 2013 at 23:04 GMT
Originally opened as https://github.com/freelawproject/recap-server/issues/31

---

Well, that's a trip. I downloaded docket item #128 today in United States v. Aaron Swartz (ecf.mad's 11-CR-10260), and it came up as

gov.uscourts.mad.137970.128.0.pdf

That is BIZARRE!

It is docket ECF docket # 137971 , not 137970!!

Needless to say, it does not show up at
http://ia600504.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137971/

I'm not sure how this could have happened, but something's horribly wrong...

[freelawbot]

Comment by johnhawkinson
Monday Jun 10, 2013 at 23:08 GMT

---

Logs at https://gist.github.com/johnhawkinson/5753248

[freelawbot]

Comment by johnhawkinson
Monday Jun 10, 2013 at 23:08 GMT

---

Also, this has clearly happened before. See http://ia700507.us.archive.org/26/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137970/

[freelawbot]

Comment by sjschultze
Tuesday Jun 11, 2013 at 17:47 GMT

---

Ah, yes this is a known issue. We had an issue for it on the old, private repo for the server code. I am copying the text of my original report below:

"Doppelganger cases with no available documents"

http://archive.recapthelaw.org/mad/137970/
http://archive.recapthelaw.org/mad/137971/ (the real case)

The second case is some kind of weird mirror image of the first. PACER seems to do this often, but I don't know why. When you go to download the *70 documents on PACER, the doc1 links are the same as those for the *71 case, so effectively no documents for *70 case ever appear. This might require a fix to the recap server code and/or the recap archive code.

It's not just the recap archive, it looks the same on IA:
http://www.archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.mad.137970/

I don't know how that one PDF file made its way into that bucket.

[freelawbot]

Comment by johnhawkinson
Thursday Jun 27, 2013 at 17:39 GMT

---

Another doppelganger, Boston marathon bombers.
New docket number from today is 1:13-cr-10200 (ecf.mad) for the grand jury indictment.
which relists all the documents like this from the previous case (1:13-mj-02106, http://ia801700.us.archive.org/10/items/gov.uscourts.mad.151037/gov.uscourts.mad.151037.docket.html):

04/21/20131  MOTION to Seal Case as to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by USA. (Alves-Baptista, Antonia) [1:13-mj-02106-MBB](Entered: 04/22/2013)

So the PACER id is 152629.
But the docket report I ran seems to have been uplodaded to
http://ia600908.us.archive.org/32/items/gov.uscourts.mad.152628/

(that's 628, not 629). And there is a docket.xml but not a docket.html.

[mlissner]

When resolving this issue, please make sure to double check issue #146 to see if it's indeed a dup.

[mlissner]

freelawproject/courtlistener#2185 has a much better description of this issue. Closing.