Public Notice Detail
Trial Court Documents to be Indexed Retroactively for Use in Appeals
Posted: Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Please note that Rule of Civil Appellate Procedure 128.03, updated July 1, 2016, governs citation to the district court record with Document Index Numbers or other appropriate abbreviations.
Effective April 1, 2015, document index numbers, which are used in appellate court cases to cite to documents in district (trial) court records, will be assigned to documents filed in the district court prior to June 27, 2014. The index numbers will be assigned within 10 calendar days of an Appellate Notice of Case Filing or a Petition for Review of a Decision of the Court of Appeals being filed.
Read the Supreme Court Order
Since June 27, 2014, all documents filed in the district courts have been given a unique document index number that is automatically added to the registers of actions for cases. This number is intended to be a permanent and unique identifier for a single document throughout the life of a case so that judges, litigants, and court staff have a convenient and consistent way to cite documents. Use of the index numbers, along with any other required information, will be consistent with the requirements of Rule of Civil Appellate Procedure 128.03.
Below is an example of how the index numbers appear in the trial court record:
The document index numbers are labeled as “DOC ID#” in Minnesota Trial Court Public Access (MPA) Courthouse (see above) and “Index#” in Odyssey and on the Register of Actions. Here is an example of a suggested method for citing to the district court record using the index number: [DOC ID# 19, page 17]
Please note that the numbers as they appear in the system may not list chronologically for each case, depending on when each document was assigned a number. The numbers are generated by the system, do not imply any sequence of events, and only serve the purpose of identification.
If a document to be cited does not have an index number within 10 calendar days of the Notice of Case Filing or Petition for Review, please contact the district court in which the case is pending.
Registers of actions for district court cases display on MPA, both at courthouses and remotely. However, only certain public cases are available remotely. If a member of the public needs a register of actions for a case that does not display remotely, a request for that register needs to be made at the courthouse. Fees may apply.
The appellate courts receive an Index that includes the identifying numbers when the district court transmits the electronic record (eAppeal). Appellate judges and personnel are able to cross reference citations to district court document numbers against the eAppeal Index:
