Civil Procedure

This is FindLaw’s collection of Civil Procedure articles, part of the Litigation and Disputes section of the Corporate Counsel Center. It is the body of law surrounding procedural rules detailing how the court will handle a civil case. Civil procedure is a set of rules that help determine what pleas, orders and motions are allowed, as well as how to handle depositions and discovery. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, adopted by the US federal court in 1938, has been used by most states. Law articles in this archive are predominantly written by lawyers for a professional audience seeking business solutions to legal issues. Start your free research with FindLaw.

Civil Litigation

Civil Procedure Articles

Do You Want to Know a Secret: Documentary Evidence and the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination

Recent years have seen a judicial reassessment of the privilege against self-incrimination and its justifications, leading to the High Court's decision in Environment Protection Authority v Caltex Refining Co Pty Ltd. that the privilege should not ...
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Document and Record Management: Its Time has Come…

Say the word document and record management to 10 different people and you will get 10 different definitions. Th reason for this is the words have come to hold many different meanings as we attempt to control physical and electronic documents in the ...
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Document Retention In The Digital Age: How Long Is Long Enough?

The advent of the “paperless society” has been a boon for fastidious record keepers and the lazy alike. With storage capacity expanding to unfathomable dimensions and storage costs per bit of data approaching zero, the incentive to discard, at least ...
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Does Daubert Apply to None-Scientific Experts?

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals,(1) the United States Supreme Court held that the Federal Rule of Evidence 702, rather than the "general acceptance" standard established by Frye v. United States,(2) controls the admissibility of expert ...
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Dukes v. Wal-Mart: A Foreboding Class Certification Decision for Employers

On June 21, 2004, a federal district court in San Francisco certified a nationwide class of approximately current and former female employees of Wal-Mart who claim sex discrimination in promotions and pay at Wal-Mart stores around the country ...
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EDD Showcase: Ignore EDD at Your Peril

Gone are the days when parties and counsel could claim ignorance of the technical and legal issues involved in preserving electronic records associated with matters in litigation. As Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC , 2004 ...
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Effective Case Management: How to Control Litigation Outcomes and Costs

This is the first in a series of three newsletters discussing how to control litigation costs through effective case management. Part Two appears as our Fall 1998 Newsletter. Part Three appears as our Winter 1999 Newsletter. Litigation is ...
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Electronic Discovery Under the New Federal Rules

Now that we have finally gotten the hang of electronic filing, the United States Supreme Court has approved amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that will radically affect the way we handle discovery of information stored on ...
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Eliminate Extra Monthly Expenses and Keep More of Your Money

If you're like most people, you spend more money than you need to every month. Like pebbles, these minor extra expenses seem light and easy to toss away. But gather them into a pile, and these "pebbles" really add up. The reason these expenses can ...
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Employment Law: New Decisions Redefine the Scope of Attorney-Client Privilege to Former Corporate Employees

An issue that frequently arises in employment cases is whether the attorney for the plaintiff may contact employees or former employees of the defendant corporation. The answer to this question depends, in the case of a current employee, on the ...
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