Vermont: investigate missing Complaint filing type for Relief from Abuse initial filings

[nonprofittechy]

Partner testing feedback

Vermont LITEFile testing on a laptop in Chrome:

• @VTskier When the tester chose a Relief from Abuse case type, Complaint was not available as a Filing Type. A complaint is expected for starting that case, so we need to determine why it is absent from the available filing codes.

Cross-repo code check

LITEFile's current get_filing_types endpoint does not maintain a Vermont-specific allow/deny list. It forwards the selected court, case category, and case type to EfileProxyServer's filing-types endpoint and sets initial=true for a new case (initial=false for an existing case):

/jurisdictions/{jurisdiction}/codes/courts/{court}/filing_types/?initial=...&category_id=...&type_id=...

That makes the proxy/code-table filtering the first place to investigate. If the proxy returns Complaint for the exact RFA selection, this can be moved back to LITEFile as a front-end problem.

Suggested investigation

1. Reproduce in Vermont and record the exact court, case-category code, and Relief from Abuse case-type code.
2. Query the filing-types endpoint directly with those values and initial=true.
3. Check whether a Complaint filing-code row exists for that court in the current Vermont code database.
4. If it exists, verify its initial/subsequent flag and category/type relationships and whether the query filters exclude it incorrectly.
5. If it does not exist, determine whether the latest Tyler Vermont codes omit/misclassify it or whether code ingestion dropped it.
6. Add a regression test/fixture for an initial Vermont RFA filing once the expected code is confirmed.

Related

• Deduplicate filing types by unique filing type code, not EFSP code #435 tracks deduplicating filing types by unique filing-type code rather than EFSP code. The two reports both involve filing-code data/filtering, but this missing-code problem is distinct from duplicate display values.

Acceptance criteria

• The expected Complaint filing type is returned for the confirmed Vermont RFA initial-filing combination, or the issue documents an upstream Tyler code-data reason why it cannot be returned and the user-facing flow has an alternative.
• A regression test covers the confirmed behavior.

[VTskier]

I just read this in Vermont courts' documentation: To begin a New Case in the Civil, Probate, or Family Division, filer should use Filing Code “Initial Filing” to file the complaint. Perhaps we can edit that choice to "Initial Filing or Complaint."