About Our Data

The Washington official reports are the sole authoritative source of Washington judicial opinions. For the Supreme Court, the official report is Washington Reports 2d Series (Wn.2d); for the Court of Appeals, the official report is Washington Appellate Reports (Wn. App.). To ensure accuracy, all data on this website should be checked against the report of the opinion in the official reports.

Judicial opinions proceed through several stages before assuming a final form. The appellate court first issues a "slip opinion," which is posted on the Washington courts website at http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/. Each slip opinion is superseded by the report of the opinion in the official reports "advance sheets," which in turn is superseded by the report of the opinion in the official reports "bound volume."

Reporting opinions involves a continuing process of editing and refining that doesn't stop until the opinion is published in the bound volume. Multiple changes are made to each opinion between each stage. The most common type of change corrects technical matters such as citation, style, and grammar. Substantive changes that affect the opinion's meaning and opinion withdrawals result in formal court orders that are circulated to the parties and all legal publishers. Depending on when they are issued, such orders are incorporated into the report of the opinion in the advance sheets or the bound volume.

On this website, pre-1994 opinions are from bound volumes. Opinions from 1994 to July 2005 are from advance sheets. The most recent information, from July 2005 forward, comes from slip opinions on the Washington courts website. We plan to refine this information as better data become available.

Approximately 70 percent of Court of Appeals opinions are designated "unpublished," meaning that they lack precedential value and may not be cited as authority to a court. See RAP 10.4(h). This database contains unpublished opinions starting in July 2006. Unpublished opinions are labeled "UNPUBLISHED OPINION" in the case captions and are preceded by the warning "DO NOT CITE. SEE RAP 10.4(h)."

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