# US Legal Cases Lookup (CourtListener/PACER)

> US Legal Cases Lookup (CourtListener/PACER) is a paid API for AI agents from toolsmith-api.dassad10.workers.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.03/call, status down (last checked 2026-09-15).

Returns the US litigation footprint of a company or person: federal court dockets, bankruptcy filings, and published court opinions from CourtListener/PACER/RECAP.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://toolsmith-api.dassad10.workers.dev/t/legal/cases
- Price: $0.03/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: down
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Success rate: 0% of calls made through Zero
- Activations on Zero: 1
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/us-legal-cases-lookup-courtlistener-pacer-50674926
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_Jsx5fAVSjqsudhGFNtjxK

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability us-legal-cases-lookup-courtlistener-pacer-50674926
```

Example prompt: Pull the full US litigation footprint for Theranos — federal court dockets, any bankruptcy filings, and published opinions — and show me anything filed after 2018-01-01 in the Northern District of California (cand).

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need a consolidated US federal litigation profile for a company or person in a single call, especially for due diligence, compliance checks, or legal research. Prefer this over direct PACER access when you want a simple JSON response without an API key, and when you need dockets, bankruptcy, and opinions in one aggregated result.

## Known failure modes

- No cases found for the queried name — returns empty results array
- Invalid court ID provided — may return error or empty results
- Payment failure via x402 — call not executed
- Rate limiting or worker timeout for very common names with large result sets
- Name ambiguity causing unrelated cases to be returned

## How this service works

Keyless pay-per-call APIs for AI agents: 30 tools across compliance, trade, safety, web and data. Pay per call with USDC on Base via x402. No account, no API key.

## Output

A JSON object containing: federal court dockets (case name, court, nature of suit, filing date, judge), bankruptcy filings with chapter number, and published court opinions with citations — all filtered by the optional court ID and filed-after date if provided.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [
      "q"
     ],
     "properties": {
      "q": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Company or person name"
      },
      "court": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "CourtListener court id filter, optional (e.g. cand, nysd)"
      },
      "filedAfter": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "YYYY-MM-DD, only matters filed after this date"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "totals": {
   "dockets": 42,
   "opinions": 7,
   "bankruptciesInPage": 1
  },
  "dockets": [
   {
    "court": "N.D. California",
    "caseName": "SEC v. Example",
    "dateFiled": "2018-03-14",
    "suitNature": "Securities"
   }
  ],
  "opinions": [
   {
    "caseName": "Example v. State",
    "citation": [
     "123 F.3d 456"
    ]
   }
  ]
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/us-legal-cases-lookup-courtlistener-pacer-50674926/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from toolsmith-api.dassad10.workers.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/toolsmith-api.dassad10.workers.dev/llms.txt)