How to Find a Virginia Case Number and Search With It

A Virginia case number search is the precise way to find a case in the Commonwealth’s online case information systems: one number, one case, no guessing about which of four people with the same name is the right one. The number is printed on the summons or the notice the court sent, and if that document is gone, the clerk of the court that has the case can supply it.

Everything below assumes the case is already in the right system. Traffic and misdemeanor cases are general district court cases; felonies, appeals and larger civil suits are in the circuit court case information system, and the two are searched separately.

Where the case number is on a Virginia summons

For a traffic charge, the document to look at is the Virginia uniform summons the officer issued at the roadside — the slip usually described as the ticket. The case number is printed on it, together with the court that will hear the case, the date and time set, the charge and the Code section charged. Everything needed for a search is on that one piece of paper.

If the summons is lost, the same number appears on any notice the court has since sent, on a continuance notice, and on a receipt for a payment made to the clerk. Failing all of those, the clerk’s office for that court can usually look the case up by name and date of birth; many will give the number over the telephone.

What a Virginia case number is made of

Case numbers are assigned by the individual court, and the pattern is not uniform across the Commonwealth. Typically a number combines a short letter prefix identifying the type of case, the year the case was brought, a sequence number, and a suffix distinguishing one charge from another arising out of the same stop or incident. District court numbers and circuit court numbers look different from one another, and the prefixes differ by case type.

The practical rule follows from that: copy the number exactly as it is printed, including any letters, leading zeros, hyphens and the trailing digits. Reconstructing a number from memory, or dropping the suffix because it looks like padding, is the most common reason a search that ought to work returns nothing.

One stop, several case numbers

A driver stopped once and charged with three things has three cases, each with its own number, each searched separately and each capable of a different outcome. Speeding and a seat-belt charge from the same stop can end in a conviction on one and a dismissal on the other.

That also means that finding one case and stopping is a real risk. When more than one charge was written, search each number.

How to run a Virginia case number search

1. Pick the right system. District court for a traffic infraction or a misdemeanor; circuit court for a felony, an appeal, or a civil suit above the district court’s limit.
2. Pick the court. Cases are held by the court for the county or city where the charge arose, and searches are run against one court’s records — or, where the judiciary’s system allows it, a selected group of them.
3. Enter the number exactly. Character for character, from the document.
4. Read what comes back. The entry shows the charge, the Code section, the hearing date and, once decided, the disposition. What each of those terms means is set out on the page about how to read a Virginia case record.

The Commonwealth’s online case information system is free and is the current copy. Commercial “Virginia case lookup” sites charge for stale snapshots of the same data, which they are not permitted to redistribute in the first place.

What to do when you do not have the number

Search by name instead, and treat the result with care. A name search matches the name recorded on the charging document — not a nickname, not a married name adopted later, and not a spelling the court did not use. Try the surname on its own before concluding that nothing is there.

The more important caution is the opposite one. A name search can return several people, and nothing on the screen proves which is which. The Commonwealth’s systems deliberately limit the identifying detail displayed, so treating a name match as an identification is a guess — and publishing it as a fact about a named person is how defamation claims start.

If the name search fails, the reasons are usually mundane: the case is too new to be entered, the court is the wrong one, or the records for that court do not reach back that far. The page on how quickly a Virginia traffic case appears online covers the timing after the summons is written.

Getting the number, or the file, from the clerk

Court records have their own statute. For a district court, Va. Code § 16.1-69.54:1 provides that requests for copies of non-confidential court records in individual case files go to the clerk of that district court; Va. Code § 17.1-208 does the same for a circuit court and makes the clerk’s records open to inspection in the office by any person.

The number is what makes such a request workable. Both sections entitle a clerk to insist that the records be identified with reasonable specificity, which a case number does in a single line and a person’s name does not. “Send me everything you have on this person” is a request a clerk is entitled to hand back; “the summons and the disposition in case number X” is one that can simply be pulled from the file. Both sections also let the clerk ask for the request in writing, with the requester’s name and legal address, and for the estimated cost before any copying starts, and both put an outer limit of 30 days on the answer. The rest of the procedure, and which Virginia office holds which record in the first place, is on the page about who holds which Virginia record.

A case number is also what an attorney will ask for first. For a pending charge, particularly a misdemeanor, a Virginia traffic attorney working from the case number and the court file can say what the entry on the screen cannot.