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

Lawsuit or Life? A wrongful termination case demonstrates how both the utility and the limitations on legal advice operate in the real world of lawyering.

A classic bit of business of the Jack Benny Program involved a masked hoodlum accosting the comic and his friends on a city street. "Your money or your life," the hoodlum growled while brandishing his gun. Benny's friends began to reach for their ...
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Lawyer Communications With Judges, Jurors, Witnesses, And Parties

There is a maze of ethics rules that regulate, restrict, and prohibit lawyer communications with judges, jurors, witnesses, and parties. This article highlights the communication rules in a question-and-answer format. In some instances, the rule is ...
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Lawyers Have Ethical Duty to Advise Clients of ADR

Although the term "alternative dispute resolution" (ADR) does not appear in the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC), the subject has been addressed in Michigan Ethics Opinions. Specifically, RI-255 (1993) and RI-262 (1996) conclude that a ...
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Legal Risk Management for the Millennium

D&O Liability Update; High Technology Update The "Year 2000 Software Crisis" (a/k/a "Y2K") should require no introduction. Any company that is not yet intimately familiar with the so-called millennium bug and taking proactive steps to fix it is ...
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Lex Mentis: Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

Of course, we know that when plaintiffs in employment lawsuits get up on the witness stand and take the oath, their testimony that follows is always the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Nonetheless, defense attorneys tend to be the ...
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Lifting The Vail: Federal Trade Commission Determines That The Fair Credit Report Act Applies To Workplace Sexual Harassment Investigations

In 1996, Congress passed the Consumer Credit Reporting Reform Act, which amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA" or "Act"), the federal law that governs the acquisition and use of virtually any type of information gathered by "consumer ...
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Listen To The Experts? Recent Appellate Rulings Affect Admissibility Of Medical-Expert Testimony

Complex civil cases, all too often, become the province of expert witnesses. Regardless of the issue, it is the rare case when counsel is unable to locate an expert who will support a given scientific proposition. And when they do, the expert ...
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Listening: The Art of Advocacy

"Whatever success I have had in life," he told an attentive Gertrude, "I owe to having been willing to accept information from any source. It only meant a little trouble, being nice to people, and polite when they came to me with news, and rewarding ...
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Litigation Issues: What is a Class Action?

Class action litigation is at the cutting edge of our legal system. A number of prominent cases have captured the attention of the media and the public recently, including class action lawsuits against breast implant manufacturers, the tobacco ...
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Look before You Leap In Pursuing Criminal Charges Against a Former Employee

An employer that becomes too aggressive in the pursuit of criminal charges may find itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit for malicious prosecution or abuse of process. Recently, a Greensboro employer learned the dangers of pursing criminal ...
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