Coverage and known gaps

Case Harvester collects public Maryland court records from Case Search. It does not hold every case ever filed. This page lists the gaps we know about, what each one does to counts, and how the cases we hold compare with the court's published filing counts. Each gap below repeats the short note you see in the app, then explains it at length. Freshness figures and how far back the records go are on the statistics page.

Baltimore City rent cases before May 2024

Covers: Failure to Pay Rent cases in Baltimore City, filed before May 6, 2024.

Case Search did not list Failure to Pay Rent cases for Baltimore City before May 6, 2024, when the city's rent docket joined the courts' electronic system. Earlier years are near zero because the court did not publish those cases, not because few were filed.

Baltimore City was the last Maryland jurisdiction to move onto the courts' electronic filing system, on May 6, 2024. Before that date the city's rent docket was not published on Case Search, so Case Harvester holds almost no Failure to Pay Rent cases for Baltimore City filed before then. Other case types for the same court, such as Rent Escrow and Tenant Holding Over, are present for those years.

Source. Last checked September 9, 2026.

Prince George's County rent cases before November 2023

Covers: Failure to Pay Rent cases in Prince George's County, filed before November 1, 2023.

Case Search did not list Failure to Pay Rent cases for Prince George's County before November 1, 2023, when the county's rent docket moved to electronic filing. Earlier years are near zero because the court did not publish those cases, not because few were filed.

Prince George's County began accepting Failure to Pay Rent filings electronically on November 1, 2023, after Baltimore County's 2022 pilot and ahead of the statewide rollout in January 2024. Before that date the county's rent docket was not published on Case Search, so Case Harvester holds almost no Failure to Pay Rent cases for Prince George's County filed before then. The measured counts are 16 cases filed in 2022, 13,192 in the last two months of 2023 and 63,650 in 2024.

Source. Last checked September 10, 2026.

Rent cases shielded by law

Covers: Failure to Pay Rent cases statewide, filed on or after October 1, 2024.

Failure to Pay Rent cases filed from October 1, 2024 that ended without a judgment for possession are removed from Case Search by law. Case Harvester includes any of these cases it collected before removal. Counts from then on are not comparable with earlier years.

Maryland Real Property § 8-503, as amended by Chapter 347 of 2024, applies to Failure to Pay Rent cases filed on or after October 1, 2024. If the case ends without a judgment for possession, the District Court removes it from Case Search 60 days after the case closes. Case Harvester keeps and marks a record it already holds, but it cannot collect a case after Case Search removes it. The cases that remain discoverable are mostly those that ended in a judgment for possession, so counts from October 2024 on are not comparable with earlier years or with the court's published filing totals.

Source. Last checked September 10, 2026.

Missed rent filings, October 2024 to June 2026

Covers: Failure to Pay Rent cases statewide, filed October 1, 2024 through June 30, 2026.

Between October 2024 and June 2026, Case Harvester did not collect new filings reliably. Cases that Case Search still lists were recovered later. Rent cases the court had already removed were not, so rent counts for those months run below the court's published totals.

Between October 2024 and June 2026 the daily discovery of new filings ran only partly, and for most of that period not at all. In 2026 Case Harvester recovered the missed cases that Case Search still listed. Rent cases the court had already removed under the shielding law could not be recovered, so rent counts for those months run below the court's published totals. The completeness table below shows the measured share for April 2025.

Last checked September 10, 2026.

Charge outcomes Case Search no longer publishes

Covers: Charges, every filter.

Since May 2021 some charge outcomes are missing, so outcome shares are incomplete.

Since May 2021, Case Search has not published charges that ended in acquittal, dismissal, or nolle prosequi, because Maryland Criminal Procedure § 10-401 bars it from referring to those charges. Until January 31, 2026 the statute excepted a nolle prosequi that required drug or alcohol treatment. Since that date the same bar has also covered charges the court marked stet on the docket at least three years previously, and cannabis possession convictions the Governor later pardoned. Outcome shares for charges disposed after May 2021 include only charges Case Search still publishes, not every charge filed.

Source. Last checked September 10, 2026.

Party Kind blanks and accuracy

Covers: Parties, every filter.

Party Kind is classified by AI from the name alone, and some kinds are blank.

Party Kind comes from an AI system that classifies each distinct party name as a person, an organization, a government body or property, reading only the name. Property is money, a vehicle or real estate named as a party, such as seized currency or a street address. The kind is blank when the system could not tell, when its confidence was too low to show, or when a new name has not yet been classified. About 230 common names, such as the Office of the Public Defender, take their kind from a reviewed list instead, matched by exact spelling. Placeholders on that list, such as an unknown tenant, are left blank. An October 5, 2026 check compared random samples with the labels two other AI systems gave each name independently. The kind shown was correct for 98.0% of Organization records, 100% of Government records and 99.0% of Person records. Most Organization errors were the Public Defender, which the list now corrects. A name the system could not classify at first may be asked again with a definition of each kind. A kind from that second answer, and any Property, is shown only at a confidence where an October 7, 2026 check found at least 98% of that kind correct. The checks did not measure how many names are left blank, so a count of organizations, government bodies or property can miss some whose kind is blank. The kind is also shown for criminal defendants and eviction tenants, whose names are withheld.

Last checked October 7, 2026.

Directory Match accuracy and limits

Covers: Attorneys, every filter.

Directory Match comes from Case Harvester's own comparison with the attorney directory, and a small number of shown matches are wrong.

Directory Match is not recorded by the court. Case Harvester compares the name, the city and the years on the case with each listing in the Judiciary's attorney directory, using an AI system, and shows a listing only when one fits clearly. In a labelled check on September 29, 2026, in which two AI reviewers working from written rules labelled sampled pairs independently, 111 of 112 shown matches were correct. The check cannot see a lawyer who is missing from the directory and shares a name with a listed lawyer. Such a lawyer can be matched to that listing. The directory itself is collected by search and is incomplete. Appearances entered under an office or firm name are not matched, and a name that has not yet been compared shows Not compared.

Last checked September 29, 2026.

Custody stays from weekly locator searches

Covers: Custody stays, every filter, and Cases filtered by custody stays.

County detention centers and days in custody before August 28, 2026 are missing.

Case Harvester searches the DPSCS Incarcerated Individual Locator about once a week, starting August 28, 2026. The locator lists people held in state prisons and in Baltimore City's booking and detention facilities, not in county detention centers, and it keeps no history, so earlier custody cannot be recovered. Every date is the date a search started or ended, so each end of a stay is known only to within about a week, or longer when a search ran slowly. A person is matched to a case only through the birth date on the court record, so cases without one never show a stay, and every match is possible rather than confirmed. Not being listed is not evidence that someone was out of custody. A stay on a case shows when the person was held, not that the case caused it. Gone means the locator stopped listing the person, and release, transfer out of state custody and death look the same. Central Home Detention Unit appears as a facility, although the people it lists are on home detention. A few people at Central Booking appear to be listed twice, once without a state ID, so a case can show two overlapping stays for what is likely one person.

Source. Last checked October 6, 2026.

Completeness against the court's published filings

Where the Maryland Judiciary publishes a monthly filing count, we compare it with the cases we hold for the same court, case type and month. The share is cases held divided by cases the court reported filed.

The figures in the Court reported column link to the District Court of Maryland Landlord/Tenant Case Activity Report they come from. Each court reports its own count at month end.

April 2025 is the only month measured so far.