Also known as: certified copies · cert. copy
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A duplicate of an original document certified as an exact reproduction by the officer responsible for issuing or keeping the original. The certification allows the copy to serve the same evidentiary and procedural functions as the original in court filings, record transfers, and official proceedings.
Cody Callahan sued Coastal Shipping in state court. Coastal removed the case to federal district court. After finding no subject matter jurisdiction, the federal judge entered a remand order. The clerk mailed a certified copy of that order to the state court clerk, allowing the state court to resume proceedings immediately.
Camila Cervantes sought an abortion in a state hospital after reporting a rape. Hospital policy required her written statement plus a certified copy of the police report. She obtained the certified copy from the local law enforcement agency and attached it to her statement, satisfying the statutory precondition for the procedure.
Mary Doe, a 22-year-old married Georgia resident who was nine weeks pregnant when the complaint was filed, joined twenty-three other individuals and two nonprofit corporations in filing this federal action in the Northern District of Georgia against the state attorney general, the Fulton County district attorney, and the Atlanta chief of police. The plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of Ga. Code Ann. §§ 26-1201 to 26-1203, which made abortion a felony except when a licensed physician determined in his best clinical judgment that continuation of the pregnancy would endanger the woman's life or seriously and permanently injure her health, that the fetus would likely be born with a grave permanent defect, or that the pregnancy resulted from forcible or statutory rape, and only after satisfying multiple procedural conditions including advance written request, hospital committee approval, performance in an accredited licensed hospital, and Georgia residency. Doe alleged that she had three children already placed in foster care or for adoption, had been a patient at the state mental hospital, lived in poverty with her reconciled husband who worked only sporadically, and had been advised by her physician that an abortion would be safer for her health than carrying the pregnancy to term, yet her application to the Grady Memorial Hospital abortion committee was denied because her situation did not fit the statutory exceptions. A three-judge district court tried the case on the pleadings and interrogatories, held that only Doe presented a justiciable controversy, invalidated the limitations on reasons for abortion and the residency requirement, upheld the hospital and committee requirements, granted declaratory relief, and denied injunctive relief; both sides appealed and the Supreme Court postponed probable jurisdiction.
View caseA certified copy may substitute for an original public record when the copy is certified as correct by the custodian or bears an official seal. The rules treat such copies as self-authenticating and admissible to prove the contents of the original without further foundation.
Supporting sources
The state court clerk receives the certified copy and may thereupon proceed with the case. The federal court's remand order takes effect upon mailing of the certified copy.
A partner or transferee may extinguish a charging order by satisfying the judgment and filing a certified copy of the satisfaction with the court that issued the order.
After required approvals, the clerk sends the file or a certified copy to the clerk in the transferee district so the prosecution may continue there.
…of the date, time and place of the rape and the name of the rapist, if known. There must be attached to this statement a certified copy of any report of the rape made by any law enforcement officer or agency and a statement by the solicitor general of the judicial circuit where the rape occurred or allegedly occurred that,…