Archives West Finding Aid

These dockets contain summaries of cases heard in Justice Court for the City of Columbia Precinct. Most are civil cases, although Volume 4 also includes some criminal cases. The majority of civil cases relate to debts or personal property, while criminal cases include offenses such as larceny, assault & battery, threatened assault, and display of a deadly weapon. There is also a series of requests for search warrants, apparently part of an effort to crack down on gambling. Volume 1 contains numerous pasted-in Transcripts of Judgments, all relating to cases brought by the State Insurance Co. against individuals for money owed.

Case information includes names of parties to the case, names of attorneys, costs, lists of filings, and disposition of the case. Because of the type of book used, these details are less clearly delineated in Volume 1 than in the later volumes. Volume 4 and (to a lesser extent) Volume 2 have names indexed at the front. The cases represented in this collection all took place before Columbia City was annexed and therefore were not under the purview of the Seattle Municipal Court system.