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COURTS on-line Electronic Filing Helpful Hints memo 2 Date: March 1, 2004
In this issue: COMPLETING CLAIM PETITIONS AND ANSWERS COMPLETING DEPENDENCY CLAIM PETITIONS AND ANSWERS SAVING & PRINTING DOCUMENTS MANAGING YOUR MESSAGE BOX

COMPLETING CLAIM PETITIONS AND ANSWERS 1. Format of certain data fields: Date of Accident ­ must be entered as mm/dd/yyyy. If the occupational box is checked off, the system will also accept the date in the yyyy or mm/yyyy formats. The date of accident is a mandatory field. Date Stopped Work, Date Returned to Work, Date Injury Reported To Employer ­ these fields must be entered as mm/dd/yyyy. Rate of Compensation ($), Temporary Disability Paid ($), Permanent Disability Paid ($) ­ these fields must be entered as a monetary value (without the dollar sign). You cannot enter in text such as "NCLT", MAX", "To be submitted", etc in these fields. These edits were programmed into the system to preserve the validity and consistency of our data. To get around this when you are e-filing, if you do not have data for a particular field, you should simply leave those fields blank. Specifically in the "benefits paid" section, when a field is left blank, an assumption is made that the data will be submitted at a later time. When no benefits have been paid or if the petitioner lost no time from work, you can indicate that by entering "0" in the field. If you wish to clarify your CP or Answer further, you can use the "Other Pertinent Information" section, which provides space to enter free-form text. 2. Carrier Search Tool If you are searching for a carrier, self-insurer or a governmental entity in the carrier field and you cannot find it, please search again by modifying your search query. For example, instead of searching for the "Bureau of Risk Management", you may want to just search for "Bureau"; instead of searching for "A.B.C. Insurance", try searching for "ABC Insurance" or "A B C Insurance" or just simply "ABC". Note - Municipalities and Counties are typically formatted in the following way in the table: Newark City (instead of City of Newark), Essex County (instead of County of Essex). If you find the correct name of the carrier but the address is different than what you would like to use on the CP or Answer, please note that this is the address that has been provided to the Division by that particular carrier for legal document service purposes. You still have the option of selecting the "unlisted" selection and then manually typing in the carrier name and address of your preference but be advised that the Division will still serve legal documents and hearing
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notices to the registered address of that company and not to the address that you manually entered on the form. 3. In the case where the respondent is a self-insured company, you must search for that selfinsurer from our search table to populate the carrier section. If you cannot find the company and if you've exhausted all the search options, you should then select "unlisted". Once you're back in the CP template, you should then type in the name of the self-insurer and their address. Please do not type in "Self", Self-insured" or "Serve Direct" as our system does not recognize these. After submitting an Answer electronically, the confirmation page will advise you as to whether the carrier and the petitioner's attorney are e-filers. If they are e-filers, there is no need for you to send a copy of the Answer to them through the mail. The system will automatically forward the Answer to their respective Message Boxes for downloading.

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COMPLETING DEPENDENCY CLAIM PETITIONS AND ANSWERS
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The template for the electronic DCP is not exactly like the printed form. Some of the decedent and dependent data fields have been moved due to space constraints on the screen. However, when the DCP prints, the printed form will be the same as the current paper DCP form. Date of death is a required field in addition to date of accident. Electronic filing requires that the petitioner on the DCP be listed as the first dependent. The system will automatically pre-fill the petitioner's name as the first dependent in the list of dependents section on the template. Electronic filing also requires complete dependent information for each dependent entry-name, age, date of birth, relationship. The system checks for validity between the date of birth and age. The monetary fields are all configured as $$$$$$$$$.CC.

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SAVING & PRINTING DOCUMENTS:
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The system won't let you Save or Save & Print a document if there are certain data formatting errors. When that is the case, you will get a message at the very top of the document template (in red) that will explain the errors. In order to get the document saved or printed, you should either correct those errors or delete the incorrect entry all together. For example, if you get an error message saying the date of accident is formatted incorrectly, you should go to the date of accident field and either correct it to the proper format or delete it altogether. You can always update the information before you submit the final version of the document. You should then hit Save or Save & Print again. If the document is successfully saved, you will receive a confirmation at the top of your document template. Please note that the system will time out your session after 20 minutes of inactivity. To avoid losing any data, we encourage you to frequently save your document while you are working.
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If you are having difficulty in viewing your documents by using either the "Save & Print" feature or by clicking on the document from your File Cabinet, confirm that you are running Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5.0 or higher. If you are running version 6.0, make sure that it is version 6.0.1. If you just have version 6.0, follow these instructions to upgrade to 6.0.1: Open Adobe Acrobat 6.0 reader and choose, the menu Help -> updates. Choose the prompted updates and install them and the reports should start appearing correctly within the e-filing program. Or alternatively you can download the latest 6.0.1 reader from the adobe website: (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/main.html). If you have recently upgraded your Internet Browser and you find that you are unable to use Adobe Acrobat, it could be that the plug-ins from Adobe Acrobat are not working properly with your new Browser. Simply, uninstall and re-install your Adobe Acrobat Reader. When doing this, we recommend that you install version 6.0.1. If using the "Print E-Filed Docs" tool (available from the link on the left side main menu), you will see that the document type listing has been expanded to include "All Document Types". This way, you can avoid having to select every type of document one by one when printing your documents in mass. To use this feature, you simply have to check off the box located next to Document Type, called "All docs". This will display all the documents in separate Browser windows simultaneously. For example, if you have Claim Petitions, Answers to Claim Petitions and Answers to Dependency Claim Petitions in your listing of documents, 3 Internet windows should simultaneously open. Click on the print button in each open Internet window and then close the window until there are no more windows left open.

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MANAGING YOUR MESSAGE BOX 1. As long as your firm is an active participant in the electronic filing program, electronically filed legal pleadings will be sent to your firm only through the COURTS on-line website. Manually filed documents will continue to be sent to your firm through US Mail. We therefore encourage you to frequently check your COURTS on-line Message Box to download newly filed documents. In order to keep the size of your Message Box down to a manageable size, you should delete all Answer documents after you have printed them. Messages relating to Claim Petitions (and Dependency CP's Re-Openers and Amended CP's) will remain in your Message Box until the answer for that case has been filed. The system will then automatically purge the message at that time.

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For assistance with COURTS on-line Electronic Filing, please contact: (609) 984-2566 (609) 777-1926 609) 777-4921 e-mail : [email protected].
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