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Learn
the basic stages of lawsuits.
THE 7 STAGES TO
A LAWSUIT
The first thing to
remember is that not all lawsuits are going to be exactly
the same – for example, the procedure in a criminal case is
not exactly the same as a civil case. Having said that, the
basics of a lawsuit will be similar.
The following are the 7,
what we should probably have called “core”, stages to a
lawsuit:
CORE LAWSUIT
STAGES
Stage 1: Filing the
Court Papers
In a criminal case the
court papers will either be filed by the federal government
or the state – so we will leave criminal cases aside here.
However, in a civil case it’ll be up to you, or more
appropriately your lawyer, to start the legal proceedings
off by filing with the court documents that are known as
“pleadings”. In these pleadings you will set out a summary
of the facts that transpired and the reason why you think
the law has been broken – in other words, the reason why you
believe you have a case.
Once you have submitted
the pleadings, the court will then send the other party what
is known as a “summons” informing them that pleadings, which
now become known as the “complaint”, have been filed against
them. The other party will then have a pre-prescribed period
of time to answer the complaint filed against them. Now,
here the other party is not required to counter-claim your
claim, per se. Rather they dissect your complaint and
respond to it paragraph by paragraph with either a
“admitted”, “denied” or “insufficient knowledge to admit or
deny” tag.
Having filed the
complain and answer, and assuming there is not counter-claim
or cross-claim, we then move on to stage 2.
Stage 2: Choosing a Jury
One of the wonders of
living in a democracy is that we nearly always have the
right to have our court case tried in front of a “jury of
our peers”. On the other hand, as anyone who has watched
Court TV can tell you, one of the inherent problems with our
modern legal system is the time it takes to select a jury!
In short, the district
where the court is located will call a number of people to
join the jury panel of your case. At this time, the judge,
the other person’s lawyer, and your lawyer can all ask each
of these jury members a number of questions – either about
the case or in general. If any of these people don’t like
the answers they are being given, then they can excuse that
jury member (although there is a maximum overall number of
potential juries that can be exempted). So, with all this
questioning and excusing going on, expect this process to
take some time!
Stage 3: Opening
Statements
Having sat through jury
selection, and having finally decided a jury and a day on
which to start the trial, you can now look forward to
opening statements – or arguments as they are sometimes
(wrongly) called in the movies. In opening statements your
lawyer will set out before the jury why he thinks you have a
good (“sound”) case to bring the case and what the jury
should do to remedy the case. He’ll also set out how he
intend to prove this over the coming days/months of the
trial.
After your lawyer, as the
plaintiff, has given his opening statement, then the
defendant’s lawyer will give his opening statement, which
will effectively rebut your lawyer’s opening statement.
Stage 4: Witness and
Expert Testimony and Cross-Examination
Once the opening
statements are out of the way, we then get into the part of
the case that gets most law drama fans excited – the
examination and cross-examination of the witnesses and
experts.
In fact, in normal
proceedings this is a fairly dull process, taking no more
than a couple of days, and is merely a few people standing
up and swearing that the facts to the case are as you have
claimed.
Stage 5: Closing
Arguments
Once the Quincy like
excitement of the examinations is out of the way, each of
the lawyers then has the chance to give a closing argument,
where they will remind the jury all of the salient facts
that have arisen during the case that support their case.
Stage 6: Jury
Instruction
Following closing
argument, the judge will then instruct the jury on what
matters of law there may be. At this time, if the facts are
clear-cut enough, the judge can even “direct” the jury to
give a particular judgment. Failing which, the jury will
take themselves off to the jury room to deice whether to
give you or the defendant the judgment.
Stage 7: The Verdict
When the jury returns,
they’ll tell the court what their decision is. In cases
where damages can be determined by the jury, they may give
this as well. The judge will then consider the jury’s
decision, and if he agrees he’ll give a verdict as the jury
has directed. However, if he disagrees with either the jury’s
verdict, or the level of damages that the jury has awarded,
it is within his right to enter a verdict he see fit.
Following the verdict
you’ll then move on to stages 8, 9, 10 and so on of the
case. These are more commonly known as “the appeal”,
“getting the defendant to pay”, and so on…
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