Public Record Statement
The Montgomery County Clerk of Courts is the keeper of the record for all legal documents filed in the Montgomery County Municipal Court, General Division Common Pleas Court, Domestic Relations Common Pleas Court, and Second District Court of Appeals. Court documents are public records. Therefore, records for all traffic, criminal, civil, domestic relations, and appellate cases are available in their entirety for public viewing during normal operating hours. Business hours for each of the Clerk’s offices are accessible through the Contact link on this website.
Several years ago, the Clerk’s office developed the PRO (Public Records Online) System, an internet-based product that documents the major events in the life of a case through an online viewable docket. In addition to the online docket, the PRO System enables customers to view imaged documents that accompany these major events in each case.
The PRO System was designed for our primary customer base; the legal community. Judges, lawyers, probation officers, paralegals, title company officials, court staff, and legal administrators are able to utilize PRO to view documents and follow case activity at the touch of a button. Prior to the PRO System, each interested party would have to come into the Clerk’s office, request a copy of the file, pay for copying charges if they wanted a copy, and return that file to our staff. (Original files must stay in the Clerk’s office except for those files signed out by judges.)
Besides the legal community, PRO has delivered value for other customers as well. For example, neighborhood groups have indicated that they use the PRO System to find out information that fall into the foreclosure process. These groups can also follow the progress of criminal cases involving issues of public safety that impact where they live. We are opening up the doors of the courthouse in a different, but meaningful way through our Public Records Online (PRO) System.
Debate about privacy issues has increased in recent years because technology has enabled this office and other government offices to display public information via the internet. So how do we balance privacy issues with what we believe is a meaningful information source for the citizens of this community? This balance is exactly what makes discussions about privacy issues difficult, because you have different opinions about where that proper balance lies. There are 88 county clerks of court in Ohio, and it is conceivable that you could have 88 different opinions about privacy issues with regards to placing court records on the internet.
Here are our practices regarding public records and the PRO System.
- Court records are public records, unless a court determines otherwise.
- This office will scan every document that is not filed electronically.
- There are some documents (images) that we have chosen to conceal from public viewing for PRO users. It is not in the public interest for certain documents to reside on an internet site for mass public viewing. Remember, every document is available for public view if someone wants to walk into the Clerk’s office. However, we have made the decision to suppress the documents from the internet site.
We have tried to be thoughtful about how we display information on the internet and believe we have found the balance that we should seek. We will continue to try to do more, not less, in the future with our efforts regarding case information and technology.
Revised May 26, 2016
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The Public Records Online (PRO) System was created and is maintained by the Montgomery County Clerk of Courts. The system is intended as a convenience to the citizens of Montgomery County for the purpose of obtaining public record information regarding Traffic, Criminal, and Civil cases filed in the Montgomery County Municipal Court; Criminal and Civil cases filed in the General Division Common Pleas Court; Domestic Relations cases filed in the Domestic Relations Common Pleas Court; and Court of Appeals cases filed in the Second District Appellate Court of Ohio. No warranty or guarantee is provided or implied through the availability of the PRO system. No certification of authenticity can be assumed regarding the accuracy of the information provided by the PRO system. Those wishing to obtain “certified copies” of documents contained in official court files or certification of the official docket must appear in person at the Clerk of Courts offices and request such certification of copies.
Every effort is made to insure the accuracy of the information found in the PRO system. The docket entries found in the PRO system are the exact entries found on the official court docket in the respective courts.
The document images associated with individual cases are redacted images of documents filed in the respective courts. Normally, documents filed with the Clerk of Courts are available to be viewed within 48 to 72 hours of their filing. Occasionally, errors occur in the processing of the document images resulting in the incorrect association of document images with case docket entries. Not all documents are available for public viewing due to the confidential nature of some of the information found in those documents. Also, technical problems occasionally arise which block the viewing of imaged documents.
E-mail comments regarding the PRO system are encouraged. Such feedback assists us in identifying problems with our site and with designing improvements. Please note that email is not necessarily a secure means of communication and information that is of a confidential nature should not be contained in an email correspondence with this office. Email correspondence sent to this office is considered public record and is subject to the Ohio Public Records law.
The information contained in the PRO system is not warranted for accuracy and should not be relied upon for any legal purpose. Such information is not intended for distribution by other entities or organizations and the Clerk of Courts Office does not accept any responsibility for any use of the information beyond the purposes stated in this disclaimer.
Users creating their own hyperlinks to pages on this site are requested and cautioned to do so in a manner which maintains a clear distinction between the user’s content and official content published by the PRO System. Users packaging pages from this Web site hyperlinked within frames are requested and cautioned to properly identify PRO System provided content. Users formulating or constructing their own search or query URLs in attempting to bypass the database query parsers and directly access the database search engines or documents will be permanently denied access to the database without notice, as such efforts may lead to incorrectly formulated queries which may jeopardize proper operation of the database servers.
Under no circ*mstances, including negligence, shall anyone involved in the creating and maintaining of the PRO system be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages or lost profits that result from the use or inability to use the Montgomery County Clerk of Courts web site and/or any other web site linked to this site. In the event the PRO system is unavailable for any reason, including but not limited to technical difficulties, the Montgomery County Clerk of Courts assumes no responsibility to restore the PRO system within any predetermined period of time.
Due to limitations of equipment and bandwidth, The PRO System is not intended as a source of information for those seeking copies of large quantities of records. These databases are intended for use by the general public. They are not intended to be a source for bulk downloads of PRO System data. Efforts to mine large quantities of data from the PRO System without prior approval of the Clerk of Courts office will be detected and stopped. Public or private organizations wishing to obtain data files from the Montgomery County Clerk of Courts office should contact the Director of Information Services at 937-496-3345.
