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API Reference

Litigation & Bankruptcy Search for Individuals

How to search litigation and bankruptcy records for sole proprietors, business officers, guarantors, and beneficial owners using Baselayer.

This guide covers how to search litigation and bankruptcy records for individuals in Baselayer: sole proprietors, business officers, personal guarantors, beneficial owners or simply independent individuals.

Before reading this guide, review:

1. Why Search Individuals

For many business types and lending products, searching only the business entity is insufficient. Individual docket searches are warranted when the personal legal and financial history of an owner, officer, or guarantor is material to the credit decision.

When individual docket searches add signal:

Sole proprietors and single-member LLCs There is no meaningful legal separation between the individual and the business. A sole proprietor's personal bankruptcy, judgment, or pattern of litigation is as material as the same signals at the business level.

Personal guarantors When an officer or owner is guaranteeing a loan personally, their litigation and bankruptcy history directly affects the value of that guarantee. A guarantor with an active Chapter 13 or multiple open judgments significantly changes the risk picture.

Beneficial owners For higher-risk programs, larger ticket sizes, or regulated financial institutions, extending litigation coverage to beneficial owners provides a more complete view of the legal exposure attached to the people behind the business.

Business officers for closely-held companies In small businesses where one or two individuals control all assets and operations, officer-level legal history can surface risks not visible at the entity level.

2. Three Ways to Search Individual Dockets

Option A: additional_search_entities in a Business Docket Search

The BusinessSearch request variant for POST /docket_searches supports an additional_search_entities array, allowing you to search for individuals alongside the primary business in a single API call.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.baselayer.com/docket_searches \
  --header 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "business_search_id": "1504f313-9721-4006-b813-82faf6c6f02d",
    "additional_search_entities": [
      {
        "name": "Jane Smith",
        "type": "Person",
        "search_states": ["DE"]
      },
      {
        "name": "Robert Johnson",
        "type": "Person",
        "search_states": ["FL"]
      }
    ]
  }'

This is the recommended approach when running a business docket search and wanting to include officer or guarantor coverage simultaneously - no separate API calls required.

Option B: Direct Docket Search Using a person_id

If you already have a person_id from a previous Baselayer person record, run a docket search directly against that individual.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://api.baselayer.com/docket_searches \
  --header 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "person_id": "f9458925-bea9-4551-9913-31c21658d3d7"
  }'

This approach is useful for standalone individual searches: for example, periodic re-screening of a guarantor, or when the individual is the primary subject of the inquiry.

Option C: Person Search with Litigation Option

If you do not yet have a person_id, initiate a person search with litigation data included in the response in a single POST /person_searches request. This creates a person record and runs the docket search simultaneously.

3. Interpreting Individual Docket Results

The response structure and field definitions are identical to business docket searches. The same risk_level logic, normalized_status, match_level, and is_bankruptcy fields all apply. Refer to Litigation & Bankruptcy Search: Basics for the complete field reference.

Key differences when evaluating individual dockets:

Bankruptcy carries even more weight for individuals A personal bankruptcy for a sole proprietor is directly equivalent to a business bankruptcy.

Judgment patterns signal personal financial stress Multiple open judgments against an individual indicate a pattern of unpaid obligations.

match_level is especially important for individuals Common personal names generate more false positives than business names. Applying EXACT match level filtering is particularly valuable for individual searches to avoid surfacing unrelated individuals' cases in automated workflows.

4. Recommended Workflow

The following pattern covers the common lending use case — a business with a personal guarantor:

import requests
from datetime import date, timedelta

API_KEY = "YOUR_API_KEY"
BASE_URL = "https://api.baselayer.com"
headers = {"X-API-Key": API_KEY, "Content-Type": "application/json"}

# Single call: search business + guarantor simultaneously
payload = {
    "business_search_id": "1504f313-9721-4006-b813-82faf6c6f02d",
    "additional_search_entities": [
        {
            "name": "Jane Smith",
            "type": "Person",
            "search_states": ["DE"]
        }
    ]
}

response = requests.post(f"{BASE_URL}/docket_searches", json=payload, headers=headers)
result = response.json()

high_risk = []
cutoff = str(date.today() - timedelta(days=365 * 5))

for docket in result.get("dockets", []):
    if docket.get("match_level") != "EXACT":
        continue

    is_bankruptcy = docket.get("is_bankruptcy")
    risk_level = docket.get("risk_level")
    date_filed = docket.get("date_filed", "")

    if is_bankruptcy or risk_level == "high":
        entity = docket.get("search_entity_name", "Unknown")
        entity_type = docket.get("search_entity_type", "")
        high_risk.append(
            f"[{entity_type}: {entity}] {docket['case_type']} — "
            f"{docket['court']} (filed {date_filed})"
        )

if high_risk:
    print("HIGH RISK — escalate to underwriting:")
    for r in high_risk:
        print(f"  - {r}")
else:
    print("No high-risk docket signals detected.")

5. Where to Go Next

Updated about 16 hours ago