District Court (Third District : Salt Lake County)

Civil case indexes, 1896-1968.

View history of records' creator.

Schedule Description

Civil case indexes created by the county clerk to record the names and assigned case numbers of plaintiffs and defendants involved in civil actions, and to facilitate clerical management of and access to those files.

Scope and Content

The Civil Case Indexes record the names of plaintiffs and defendants involved in civil actions and provide assigned case numbers, facilitating clerical management of and access to the civil case files.

Information about most cases is limited to the name of the plaintiff, the name of the defendant, and the case number. The cause of action is mentioned only in proceedings pertaining to court business (grand jury lists and reports, orders summoning persons to serve as jurors, etc.), applications for extraordinary writs (habeas corpus, mandamus, and certiori), and petitions for voluntary withdrawal or corporate dissolution. Such cases are preceded by the notation "In the matter of . . ." and are grouped together in a section under the letters IN.

While sitting in Salt Lake City, the Third District Court is restricted to adjudication of civil actions involving real property located within Salt Lake County, those in which the defendant resides in Salt Lake County, and those involving incidents occurring in Salt Lake County.

Notes

Microfiche holdings require staff assistance due to fewer reference copies. Handle masters under supervision.

The successive volumes in which the indexes were kept between 1896 and 1968 were arranged chronologically. Most cover more than one year. Separate volumes indexing plaintiffs (1896-1921) and defendants (1896-1929) originally were maintained. The practice of including both parties together in the same index volume began in 1921. Index entries within individual volumes are roughly alphabetical by the surname of the plaintiff or defendant, with the initial two letters of the surname serving as the basis for indexing.

Indexes were designated as a permanent record by Records Disposition Request 68-3, which also authorized microfilming and destruction of the original documents. The records retention policy of the Utah Judicial Council reprinted in the 1983 state retention schedule first specified a nine-year retention before microfilming. The CIVIL CASE INDEXES were microfilmed by Salt Lake County in 1975 and 1976. A previously unfilmed defendant index (1896-1910) was filmed by the Archives in May 1994. Original index volumes were destroyed by the archives in 1994, according to the retention policy. These records were archivally processed by W. Glen Fairclough, Jr., in May 1994.

Microfiche processed by Rebekkah Shaw under the National Historical Publications and Records Commission grant to the Utah State Archives and Records Services for the Utah Microfiche Backlog Project (Grant No.: NAR10-RB-50086-10). July 2010 - December 2011

The case number assigned by the court is essential to locate the desired case file. Researchers should first consult the indices to plaintiffs and defendants to find the unique case number corresponding to the appropriate case file. Prior to 1921, plaintiffs and defendants were indexed in separate volumes. Although both parties were indexed together in a single volume between 1921 and 1968, the practice of indexing defendants in a separate volume continued until 1929 resulting in an overlap for a nine-year span. Each page of the combined plaintiff and defendant indexes is divided in half, with information recorded under the appropriate heading. The plaintiff indexes appear on the left-hand side of the page while the defendant indexes are found on the right-hand side. Entries for a party may be inconsistent. Variations in spelling, acronym use, abbreviation, punctuation, form, etc., are common. For example, Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution may be indexed as Zions Co-op

Mercantile Inst. or Z.C.M.I. An alternate way to find a desired case number is through the internal surname indexes in the JUDGMENT DOCKETS, series 1671.