verify-nsw-judgment-l0cka

Verify NSW Judgment

Use caselaw.nsw.gov.au as the controlling source. NSW Caselaw is the official publisher for the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, Court of Criminal Appeal, Land and Environment Court, District Court, Local Court, NCAT and other NSW courts and tribunals, with coverage from 1999 onward (earlier for some courts). Produce a provenance record, not a bare assertion that a case "exists".

Read ../../references/case-law-verification-method.md before verifying. It defines the outcome semantics, access rules and restriction handling.

Workflow

1. Fix the scope.
   • Accept medium-neutral NSW citations (NSWSC, NSWCA, NSWCCA, NSWDC, NSWLC, NSWLEC, NSWCATAP, NSWCATAD and other NSW identifiers), NSWLR reported citations, and NSW case names.
   • Return OUTSIDE SCOPE for other jurisdictions, treatment analysis or advice. Note that decisions before a court's NSW Caselaw coverage start may exist without being published there; that is an UNVERIFIABLE boundary, not NOT FOUND.
2. Resolve the citation at the official publisher.
   • Use the advanced search's Medium Neutral Citation field. The citation must include the square brackets, as the form itself states.
   • The search executes only when the request carries the form's full query string, including the site's courts and tribunals identifier parameters — a bare mnc parameter returns the empty form. Submit the search through the site's own form (directly or in a browser) rather than a hand-built minimal URL, and read the Displaying X - Y of Z marker for the result count.
   • Make one targeted lookup per citation; never crawl or bulk-download listings.
   • For an NSWLR citation, resolve to the medium-neutral citation through the site's search before concluding anything.
3. Confirm identity.
   • Match the case name, citation, court and decision date as published, and record the NSW Caselaw decision URL.
   • A direct fetch of a decision page returns the metadata header only — citation, case name, dates, before, catchwords and the Restrictions field — which is sufficient for existence and identity. The judgment body loads in a browser session; quote checks need the rendered page or the site's document download, not the bare HTML fetch.
   • Treat a supplied case name that differs materially from the published name as a qualification, and say which differs.
4. Respect the publisher's conditions.
   • The Copyright in Judicial Decisions Notice 1995 (NSW) permits reproduction conditioned on accuracy and proper context. Reproduce nothing inaccurately, and do not republish party names into contexts a search engine indexes.
   • Check the decision page for restriction, suppression or non-publication notations before quoting anything. Preserve any found and treat them as qualifications.
5. Report using the result contract.