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Cases

Fetch one case by id: its detail, its stored AI analysis, documents related to it, and its judgment PDF.

Case endpoints

Everything keyed off a single case id.

GET

/cases/:id

1 credit

One case record. The :id segment accepts either the document identifier or a case number. AI analysis is deliberately excluded from this response; fetch it separately from /cases/:id/analysis and use the hasAnalysis flag to decide whether that call is worth making. Text fields are watermarked per account.

curl https://research.courtmesh.ai/api/v1/prod/cases/507f1f77bcf86cd799439011 \
  -H "X-API-Key: cm-YOUR_KEY_HERE"

GET

/cases/:id/analysis

1 creditAI

The stored AI analysis for a case. This is a read, not a generation: it returns whatever has already been produced. If hasAnalysis comes back false, the analysis has not been generated yet and meta.note tells you to call POST /cases/:id/analyze.

Not available on the Free tier. Free Developer keys are refused HTTP 403 with code: "API_TIER_NOT_ALLOWED" on this read too, not only on the two endpoints that generate an analysis. There is no small monthly allowance: the Free tier gets zero AI analysis endpoints, full stop.

curl https://research.courtmesh.ai/api/v1/prod/cases/507f1f77bcf86cd799439011/analysis \
  -H "X-API-Key: cm-YOUR_KEY_HERE"

Analysis fields

summary and detailedSummary, short and long form
headnote, the extracted legal headnote
keyFacts, facts the model identified
issues, each with a question and the holding on it
courtsReasoning, the reasoning chain
citedCases, split into followed, distinguished, overruled and referred
practiceAreas, legalPrinciples and precedentValue

These are model outputs. Treat them as a research aid and verify anything load bearing against the judgment PDF.

GET

/cases/:id/related

1 credit

Every stored document that shares this case's case number, plus a chronological timeline built from them. Useful for following a matter through hearings, orders and final judgment.

Works for every court. The grouping is done on case number with no court condition of any kind, so Supreme Court, High Court, District Court and Tribunal records are all covered. An earlier version of this page said Supreme Court only, and that was never true of the code.

curl https://research.courtmesh.ai/api/v1/prod/cases/695b2c9f66d5a34cea312b32/related \
  -H "X-API-Key: cm-YOUR_KEY_HERE"

Reading the response

relatedDocuments is ordered by decision date, oldest first, and is capped at 50 documents per case number
isCurrent marks the document you asked for
timeline is a strict subset: it only includes documents that have both a decision date and a stored PDF, so it can be shorter than relatedDocuments
status is one of Case Initiated, Hearings / Orders or Final Judgment, and the first event is relabelled Case Initiated unless it is already a final judgment
statusLabel carries the raw disposal wording where the record has one, which is more specific than status
A case with no case number returns empty arrays and an explanatory meta.message, not a 404

GET

/cases/:id/pdf

5 credits

A time limited link to the judgment PDF. The link is a presigned URL valid for one hour, and it is returned encrypted, so cache the case identifier rather than the URL. A 404 here carries a machine readable code so you can tell the two failure modes apart: CASE_NOT_FOUND when the case id itself does not resolve, and PDF_NOT_STORED when the case exists but carries no stored document, which also carries a hint pointing you at POST /request-timeline with refresh:true for High Court and District Court cases (tribunal documents cannot be fetched this way at all).

curl https://research.courtmesh.ai/api/v1/prod/cases/507f1f77bcf86cd799439011/pdf \
  -H "X-API-Key: cm-YOUR_KEY_HERE"

Decrypting the URL

AES-256-CBC. The passphrase is caseId concatenated with caseNumber, both taken from the same response. The key is the SHA-256 of that passphrase, and the value is the hex initialisation vector, a colon, then the hex ciphertext.

const crypto = require('crypto');

function decryptUrl(encryptedUrl, passphrase) {
  const key = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(passphrase).digest();

  const parts = encryptedUrl.split(':');
  if (parts.length !== 2) throw new Error('Invalid encrypted URL format');

  const iv = Buffer.from(parts[0], 'hex');
  const decipher = crypto.createDecipheriv('aes-256-cbc', key, iv);
  let decrypted = decipher.update(parts[1], 'hex', 'utf8');
  decrypted += decipher.final('utf8');
  return decrypted;
}

const response = await fetch(
  'https://research.courtmesh.ai/api/v1/prod/cases/507f1f77bcf86cd799439011/pdf',
  { headers: { 'X-API-Key': 'cm-YOUR_KEY_HERE' } }
);
const data = await response.json();

// Passphrase is caseId concatenated with caseNumber, both from data.data
const decryptionKey = data.data.caseId + data.data.caseNumber;
console.log('PDF URL:', decryptUrl(data.data.pdfUrl, decryptionKey));

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