WHAT IS BOUNCED E-MAIL?

A "bounced" e-mail message is one that was transmitted by the Court to an address listed in CM/ECF but was returned to the Court as unable to be delivered. There are several reasons an e-mail may bounce, including the following: the address listed is no longer valid (the user has changed addresses or the person who had that address no longer works for the law firm); the user’s mailbox is full and e-mail messages need to be deleted before the user can receive any additional e-mail messages at that address; or the user’s e-mail provider has listed the Court as a possible sender of Internet spam and has rejected the e-mail message. The reason an e-mail bounces is almost always an issue with the user’s e-mail account or the user’s internet service provider. It is rare that an e-mail would bounce because of a problem on the Court’s end.

BOUNCED E-MAIL POLICY

When an e-mail bounces back to the Court, the Court’s bounced e-mail coordinator will review the message and the address. If it appears that a problem has occurred with an individual’s account that is not due to a general failure on the part of the user’s internet service provider (see next paragraph), the bounced e-mail coordinator will first re-send the e-mail. Most often, the e-mail will then go through. If the e-mail bounces back a second time, the bounced e-mail coordinator will contact the user (by phone, mail and/or by e-mail at another address listed in the user’s CM/ECF account) regarding the problem. The Court will provide all possible assistance in correcting the problem and will forward bounced e-mail to the user as necessary to allow the user time in which to correct the problem. Generally, the Court will allow the user fourteen days in which to correct the problem.

If the Court is still receiving bounced e-mail messages after the fourteen day period has elapsed, the e-mail addresses that are bouncing will be removed from the user’s account. If the user’s account has additional e-mail addresses listed, e-mail notifications will continue to be sent to those addresses and those addresses will continue to receive a "free look" at filed documents. If no other e-mail address is listed on the user’s account, the user will not receive any e-mails from the Court until the user modifies the account to reflect a valid e-mail address. Although this will not affect the user’s ability to file documents in CM/ECF, it will prevent the user from receiving a "free look" at any document filed in his or her cases. The ECF Activity Report for Your Cases is a free report that will allow the user to run a summary listing of pleadings and events that have been entered in the user’s cases, but PACER charges will apply to review any PDF documents referenced on the report.

If the e-mail messages have bounced due to a service failure on the part of the user’s internet service provider, the Court will not forward these messages to the user beginning December 1, 2006. When a service provider experiences a failure, the Court may receive hundreds of bounced messages at one time, and will no longer forward these messages to individual users. We recommend that all ECF participants have a secondary e-mail address issued by a different provider included in his/her user account to ensure that notices are received. There are numerous sites that offer free e-mail accounts. If your service provider experiences a failure, you will notice that you are not receiving any or the majority of notices from the Court. If you do have a secondary address listed in your account and need to research activity that may have occurred in your cases, you may do so by running the ECF Activity Report for Your Cases ; however, please keep in mind that although the report is free, review of any PDF document listed on the report will incur PACER charges.