Support appellate filings and pass lower court case information in EFSP payload

[nonprofittechy]

Problem summary

When attempting to calculate fees or submit an initial filing to an intermediate appellate court (e.g., in Illinois: Appellate Court – 1st District (TAC1 / PAC1), Case Category Appeal (21083), Case Type Notice of Appeal - Civil (37653), Filing Type Notice of Appeal (30341)), Tyler ECF rejects the filing with:

422 Unprocessable Entity: LowerCourtText is required or does not match regular expression.

In Tyler's ECF 4.0 specification, case category 21083 produces an AppellateCase. For appellate case types, Tyler requires metadata about the lower court (the trial court from which the appeal originated), including the lower court code (LowerCourtText), lower court docket number, and case caption.

Currently, LITEFile does not collect or format lower court case details, resulting in rejected fee quotes and submissions.

Docassemble prior art

Docassemble interviews already support appellate filings and pass lower court information to the proxy server (e.g., in docassemble-MACourts and the proxy server's lower_court_case specification).

The EFSP proxy server expects the following structure in efile_data:

{
  "lower_court_case": {
    "title": "Lower Court Case Caption",
    "docket_number": "2024-CH-0001",
    "judge": "Hon. Jane Doe"
  },
  "trial_court": {
    "tyler_lower_court_code": "cook:law1"
  }
}

In testing against Tyler Stage, providing this structure with a valid lower court code (such as cook:law1 or cook for Illinois 1st District) yields a successful 200 OK response with $0.00 fee quote and error code 0: No Error.

Proposed enhancements

1. Workflow & UI for appellate cases:

   • Detect when an appellate court or case category is selected (or when the court's case category produces an AppellateCase).
   • Prompt the filer for the originating trial court, lower court case number/docket number, lower court case caption, and judge name.
   • For Illinois, the court selector already includes an appellate_county question ("County the case came from") which can help pre-fill or identify the originating circuit court.

2. Payload construction (filing-payload.js and efsp_payload.py):

   • Construct lower_court_case and trial_court.tyler_lower_court_code in the outgoing efile_data payload.
   • Also ensure empty previous_case_id strings ("") are stripped in _clean_case_identifiers for new cases to prevent Tyler from querying empty case IDs.

3. Multi-state court code mapping:

   • Adapt the court code mapping approach from docassemble-MACourts to provide trial/lower court codes for Illinois, Massachusetts, and future supported states.

[nonprofittechy]

Additional context & upstream proxy bug details

1. EFSP Proxy Server bug (EcfCaseTypeFactory.java)

During investigation of the HTTP 500 error, we identified an upstream bug in EfileProxyServer:

• File: proxyserver/src/main/java/edu/suffolk/litlab/efsp/server/ecf4/EcfCaseTypeFactory.java in makeAppellateCaseType
• Bug: appl.getRest().add(tylerAug); is currently placed inside if (info.getLowerCourtInfo().isPresent()) { ... }.
• Impact: When an AppellateCase is generated without lower court info, Tyler's XML schema validator rejects the envelope with a SOAP Fault (The element 'AppellateCase' ... has incomplete content. List of possible elements expected: 'CaseAugmentation' in ...:CommonTypes-4.0 as well as 'CaseAugmentation' in urn:tyler:ecf:extensions:Common). Because the proxy does not catch SOAPFaultExceptions in Ecf4Filer / FilingReviewService, Jetty crashes with an unhandled HTTP 500 error.
• Fix: Moving appl.getRest().add(tylerAug); immediately after appl.getRest().add(caseAug); (outside the if block) produces schema-valid XML regardless of whether lower court info is provided.

2. Jurisdictional procedural context: Illinois vs. Vermont vs. Massachusetts

• Illinois:

  • Under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 303(a)(1), an initial Notice of Appeal is formally filed with the clerk of the Circuit (Trial) Court, not directly initiated in the Appellate Court. The Circuit Court prepares and transmits the record on appeal to the Appellate Court. Direct initial filing in TAC1–TAC5 / PAC1–PAC5 is generally reserved for interlocutory petitions, administrative review, or subsequent motions.
  • In the short term, filers intending to file an ordinary Notice of Appeal in Illinois can be guided to select their Circuit Court.

• Vermont:

  • Vermont's appellate court is the Supreme Court (vermont:supreme), which sits statewide under category 211 (Appellate, ecfcasetype: AppellateCase).
  • Regular appeals (e.g. 13382 Tort/Contract/Real Property Appeal) are marked initial: False because, as under V.R.A.P. 3, notices of appeal are filed with the trial court (Superior Court Unit).
  • However, interlocutory appeals (ILOC), extraordinary relief writs, administrative agency appeals, and certified questions (13371, 13385, 13393, etc.) are marked initial: True and can originate in the Supreme Court.
  • Because Vermont uses Tyler ECF 4.0 through the same Ecf4Filer / EcfCaseTypeFactory, any direct filing into vermont:supreme requires lower court metadata and will encounter the same proxy/payload behavior.

• Massachusetts:

  • Appeals Court (Panel and Single Justice) and Supreme Judicial Court.
  • docassemble-MACourts already maintains the trial-court-to-Tyler-lower-court-code mappings (tyler_lower_court_code / tyler_prod_lower_court_code) used by the proxy's lower_court_case and trial_court schema. These mappings can be directly leveraged when supporting MA appeals in LITEFile.