New Procedure re Duplicate Case Filings

Release Date: 
Thu, 06/14/2012

Effective June 27, 2012, the court will no longer expunge a case that is inadvertently filed twice. On occasion a case is filed twice as a result of a duplicate submission by an ECF filer or filer's staff. In the past, some filers were accustomed to requesting that the court order the expungement of the duplicate case from the court record. However, because the court docket is available immediately to all PACER users, who can download, print and distribute information, the fact of the duplicate filing is not eliminated as a result of an order of expungement and complications for the debtor resulting from the duplicate filing become more difficult to resolve when the docket is purged. Under the new procedure, if a duplicate case is filed by an ECF filer, the filer is responsible for paying the filing fee associated with the duplicate case and filing a motion to dismiss the duplicate case.