Coverage
What CaseSharp holds, and what it doesn't
CaseSharp checks your citations against the court records we hold. They are not complete, and what we hold differs by court and by year. Here is what we hold, the leading cases we know are missing, and why we send you to the source to read a judgment.
Last reviewed 13 October 2026. Next review by 13 November 2026, or sooner when our records change.
Not in our recordsmeans we couldn't find the case in our records, not that your citation is wrong.
How we count
Every figure on this page is read from our records, court by court, and none is typed by hand. “Covered to” is the date of the third most recent judgment we hold for a court, so one wrongly dated record cannot move it. It is not a promise that everything before it is there. How we measured this
Coverage by court
How recent our records are, how many judgments we hold and how many each year, for the courts and tribunals law students cite. Find yours, then check the year you need.
Loading coverage, court by court.
Leading cases we don't hold yet
26 cases a law student is commonly taught that we did not hold on 13 October 2026, checked by citation and by name. They are High Court of Australia decisions unless another court is named. The list is our own judgement of what is commonly taught, not any school's reading list.
If you cite one, the check says Not in our records
Contract and consumer law
- Miller & Associates Insurance Broking v BMW Australia Finance, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2010
- Butcher v Lachlan Elder Realty, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2004
- Campbell v Backoffice Investments, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2009We hold only the costs judgment, not the main judgment
- Commonwealth Bank of Australia v Barker, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2014
- Thorne v Kennedy, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2017
- ACCC v Kobelt, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2019
- CFMMEU v Personnel Contracting, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)[2022] HCA 1
- ZG Operations v Jamsek, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)[2022] HCA 2
- Elisha v Vision Australia, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2024
Torts
- Caltex Oil v The Dredge “Willemstad”, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)1976
- Wyong Shire Council v Shirt, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)1980
- L Shaddock & Associates v Parramatta City Council (No 1), search AustLII (opens in a new tab)1981
- Mutual Life & Citizens’ Assurance v Evatt, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)1968
- Tepko v Water Board, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2001
- Woolcock Street Investments v CDG, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2004
- RTA v Dederer, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2007
- Mallonland v Advanta Seeds, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2024
- Rader v Haines, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2022NSW Court of Appeal. We hold only the District Court decision
Public law and statutory interpretation
- CIC Insurance v Bankstown Football Club, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)1997
- SZTAL v Minister for Immigration, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2017
- Taylor v Owners, Strata Plan No 11564, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2014
- Mabo v Queensland (No 1), search AustLII (opens in a new tab)1988
- Fejo v Northern Territory, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)1998
- Akiba v Commonwealth, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2013
- Pell v The Queen, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)[2020] HCA 12
Employment
- Pinawin v Domingo, search AustLII (opens in a new tab)2012Fair Work Australia
Known problems we are fixing
Search does not always find a case we hold
On 13 October 2026 a search for “Donoghue v Stevenson” returned no result, although the judgment is held, and a search for “Lange” returned other cases instead of Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is also held.
Until then: If a case you expect is missing, search by its citation as well as its name.
Some report citations can point to the wrong case
Some Commonwealth Law Reports (CLR) citations we tested matched a different case from the one the citation belongs to. We are fixing this.
Until then: After any match, open the record and check the case name, court and year before you rely on it.
Full text: what we show, and why
CaseSharp does not show the text of judgments or legislation. It shows the details of each case we hold and links you to read the judgment where it is published.
| What | On CaseSharp | Where to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Case details: name, citation, court, date and judges | Shown | On CaseSharp, for the cases we hold |
| The text of a judgment | Not shown | On the court’s own site where we can link to it, on AustLII or on JADE |
| Paragraphs, PDFs and downloads of a judgment | Not shown | The same links, from the case page and from each check result |
| The text of legislation | Not shown | The Federal Register of Legislation for Commonwealth Acts, or AustLII |
Why we don't show it
Each court and official publisher sets its own terms for reusing its judgments. Before we show the text of a judgment, we need a copy from that court or publisher and a record of where the copy came from. That record holds:
- the court or official publisher it came from, and the web address
- when we fetched it
- a fingerprint of the file, so any later change shows
- the publisher’s reuse terms, and the date we read them
The copies we hold today do not have that record, so we don't show their text. Only a copy with that record can have its text shown on CaseSharp.
Records cleared to show full text
None yet
As of 13 October 2026
We plan to start with publishers whose reuse terms are published: Commonwealth legislation from the Federal Register of Legislation, then NSW Caselaw, then the High Court's judgments from 1998.
The check doesn't need the text
The citation check matches the facts of each citation, such as the case name, year, report and court, against our record of the case. To read the paragraph you cite, follow the link from the result to the court's site, AustLII or JADE, and confirm it yourself.
What we hold, and what we don't
We hold
- Decisions of Australian courts and tribunals, with gaps that differ by court and by year.
- Some Australian legislation.
- Hearing transcripts for many High Court cases. A transcript is not the judgment.
- Some United Kingdom and New Zealand decisions.
We are not a source for
- Journal articles, textbooks and other commentary.
- Authorised report series as published, including their headnotes and editorial material.
- A complete set of decisions for any court.
- Foreign law, apart from some United Kingdom and New Zealand decisions that appear incidentally.
Writing a thesis
If you are writing a thesis or a long research paper, CaseSharp can check the Australian case citations in one chapter at a time, up to 200,000 characters. It does not check secondary sources, legislation pinpoints or a whole thesis at once, and it is not a citator.
If a case isn't in our records
Try these, in order, before you change a citation. A case we don't hold can still exist.
Search by citation and by name
Our search can miss a case we hold, so try both before you move on.
Ask your law library
Your law library can usually give you databases that carry the authorised reports. What your law school gives you
How we measured this
Computed figures are read from the records themselves, court by court, counting each judgment in the court’s own neutral citation series (such as [2024] HCA 12) once. “Covered to” is the date of the third most recent judgment we hold in that court’s citation series, so one wrongly dated record cannot move it. It is the newest edge of what we hold, not a promise that everything before it is there. The High Court numbers each year’s judgments from 1, so the highest number we hold is the least it gave that year.
The sample figures come from our own probe of CaseSharp’s public search on 13 October 2026, which looked up citations and leading cases one at a time: judgment number 1 of six years in 22 courts, the High Court’s judgments 1 to 30 for 2023 to 2026, and 58 leading cases. They are a sample, not a census.
We review this page every month, and whenever our records change. Last reviewed 13 October 2026.
Check 3 drafts a month, free.
Your citations against our records, with links to read each case. No card, and no generative AI.