this lesson is the first in a series of lessons where we are going to consider various documents that are produced in the litigation process you may in your professional career at some time interact with legal documents you might work for a company that's a party to a lawsuit you might have to deal with discovery requests and so this unit is geared toward having an understanding of these documents so that they really aren't so scary and that you can understand what's going on behind the process now let's start with a little bit about the litigation process this picture is a very simplified big picture but i think conceptually it's very helpful for understanding where litigation happens and what's happening at different times in the process over at the left side we see that the beginning is of course a dispute between two parties actually it could be even more than two but let's just say that it's two for the moment whoever decides to file the lawsuit will be designated as the plaintiff so a complaint is filed in federal court in many state courts that's what the document is called and at that point it does become possible to discuss settlement once a lawsuit is pending the possibility of dismissing the lawsuit with prejudice to its refiling meaning that it can't be filed again is real and so settlement discussions could occur but at the same time the case moves into discovery and pre-trial motions and there are motions that are filed by both sides at various points in the lawsuit they're not going to be the same in every lawsuit but that's going on and the parties are trying to get information from each other in what's known as the discovery process the reason for doing all this of course is that ultimately the parties are headed toward trial if a case goes on long enough and it has not settled it will be set by the court for trial and then at trial evidence will be put on and heard either by the judge or in front of a jury so that generally is what's going on the key document that we want to think about first of all is this complaint that's filed by the plaintiff and realize it's the first in a battery of documents that are known as pleadings so pleadings you can best understand them as setting the boundaries of the lawsuit they're not meant to be nice after dinner reading they can be a slog they can be somewhat terse and technical but the reason that pleadings exist and the reason they must be filed by the parties is that these are documents where the parties specify the claims and defenses that are at issue in a lawsuit and the documents that state these specifics are called pleadings now the pleadings are important in setting boundaries because if you don't plead something whether it's a claim or whether it's a defense you can't recover anything now the plaintiff initiates the lawsuit with a pleading that's called a complaint that we just saw a moment ago in some states including texas this pleading would be called a petition and it doesn't really matter what it's called they both serve the same function of initiating the lawsuit by saying plaintiff wants something from the named defendant and is entitled under the law to something from the name defendant the defendant in turn is required to answer the plaintiff's pleading after the defendant has been served with process a summons and the responsive pleading is generally called an answer and the answer in federal court requires direct responses to each of the allegations that are in the complaint now again an answer like a complaint is not something that's a pretty narrative to read but nonetheless it does set out limits on what the parties can contend and prove so it's a very important document now it is possible that parties don't necessarily get everything right the first time or they discover something in the process of discovery and they need to change their pleadings so within certain limits it may be a timing issue after the lawsuit is filed or a certain number of days out from trial many times permission from the court is required but within those limits parties are generally permitted to amend their pleadings that means they can change their contentions or they can polish their contentions make them a little better more precise sometimes even drop something that's a weak version of a claim while maintaining something that's a stronger version of a claim but again the pleadings are the boundaries now the complaint and answer are not the only typical pleadings there is a such thing as a counter claim if the defendant files a files an answer and at the same time wants to contend wait not only am i not liable but you plaintiff should be liable to me you just happened to get to the courthouse before i did in that case we call that a counter claim and so really you might think of the defendant in that case as being a counter plaintiff now a cross claim exists when there are multiple parties on one side or on the other so if a defendant asserts a cause of action against a co-defendant or a plaintiff against a co-plaintiff that would be known as a cross claim now why might this happen well suppose there was let's say something simple a car accident and there's question about who should be apportioned the liability both defendants may say i'm not liable for this but they may at the same time want to say to the extent there is any liability other defendants is who should take the hit not me and that could be handled in a cross claim and that's just one example there's many ways that this could happen there's also a pleading called a third party complaint or it might be a third party petition in some courts and that's when the defendant asserts a cause of action against a new defendant who isn't already in the lawsuit now how could that happen go back to the car wreck example suppose plaintiff sued a defendant and the defendant said i remember that accident the reason it happened was because of this other person who isn't even a party to the lawsuit i'm going to bring the other party into the lawsuit and do so by filing a third party complaint now these pleadings can be combined so while the answer is the normal defensive pleading they can it can be added with these other affirmative relief pleadings into a single document so don't be surprised if something is called for example defendant's answer and counter claim or plaintiff's amended complaint and cross claim those those sort of things happen all the time in litigation and generally those names tell us who is involved in that particular angle of the dispute now there's some other concerns that parties need to be aware of and that attorneys generally are watching out for with pleadings one of these is verification some pleadings or particular factual allegations are required by law to be verified what that means is that the party making them sometimes even the attorney has to sign the document under penalty of perjury now that's a special situation and the idea behind pleadings that must be verified is that we want to be extra sure that there is a good faith basis for raising this side of the dispute and again it's it's usually the plaintiff and therefore we do that by saying you'd better be sure you're going to have to verify this pleading and if it turns out you knowingly lied then you will be liable for the crime of perjury and that's a very serious matter something that has become very common in pleadings and pretty much uh by a majority of courts now probably an overwhelming majority is that pleading occurs by electronic filing with electronic signatures the verification process for the signatures often goes through the courts and the the court may have a website or operate through a larger uh series of websites within a jurisdiction this could be true at the state level or the federal level but frequently documents that are being filed with courts now even pleadings are done electronically and the signatures are themselves electronic i mentioned this a moment ago but service of process is important just filing a pleading gets your lawsuit started but it doesn't require the other party to show up the initial pleading that joins a party to the lawsuit that could be the initial defendant or some third party joined later on that party must be served by a specified means and the date of that party's need to appear has to run from that service so if you are tagged with the citation documents then there's going to be some sort of a deadline usually specified on the citation and it's can it's knowable under the rules of procedure that apply to your particular court that that's when an answer has to be filed if service of process never occurs the lawsuit never goes anywhere beyond the initial pleading and eventually a court would tend to dismiss the lawsuit for what's known as want of prosecution so it's important after filing a lawsuit go ahead and get process served another point worth mentioning is sanctions what are sanctions if pleadings are frivolous or baseless and those are fairly high standards this doesn't mean that parties have a disagreement and one ends up being right while the other ends up being wrong frivolous means there's no basis for the argument or for the disagreement and that's hard to prove but sometimes it's possible if somebody's trying to abuse the litigation process maybe they file a frivolous pleading in the event of such frivolity if you will the party or the attorney can be sanctioned by the court and that often means paying a monetary fine that's under federal rule of civil procedure 11 or here in texas texas rule of civil procedure 13. now what are the bases for granting of sanctions well it's it it is pretty hard if you look at the cartoon here you know where the mom's saying to the dad don't you think you're a little hard on him i mean grounding is one thing but imposing sanctions well sanctions are something that's hard uh what would be some reasons a court might actually go this far because they're they're not an everyday sort of filing one reason might be presenting a signed document for an improper purpose such as blackmail or some kind of extortion would be the reason for filing the document another possibility would be that the legal contentions in the document are not warranted either by existing law or a non-frivolous argument that's key for modifying the law in a starry decisis system precedent controls but it is possible for there to be arguments that the law ought to be changed and so long as that argument has some element to it that is non-frivolous it's got to be something more than i just don't like the way the law is then uh that that's that's going to be navigating the non-frivolous standard also factual contentions in a court document that is signed or denial of factual contentions which could happen in a defendant's answer if the dot if those contentions are not supported by evidence or are not likely to be supported by evidence meaning you're saying what you're saying but there's really no basis for you to say it that could be a possible ground for sanctions based on the law based on the facts or based on using the the litigation process of filing for an improper purpose so let's wrap this up what have we learned about litigation pleadings in general in this first lesson first of all we know that the scope of a lawsuit is governed by generally the claims and defenses that are stated in a party's pleadings if it's not stated in the pleadings you don't get even an opportunity to prove it second pleadings can seek affirmative relief like in a complaint or a petition depending on what court we're in or they could be merely defensive and that's usually what we call an answer or a pleading could be a combination of both if it's any document that sets the limits on what a party is trying to prove or can prove we will call that a pleading finally we've learned that factual and legal allegations that are later found to be frivolous may be punished by sanctions imposed by the court and this does play some limit on what parties will file certainly on what attorneys are willing to file on behalf of their clients so despite what you've heard attorneys are not willing to do anything for anybody just to get paid there are standards and you'll find as a whole there are many many ethical attorneys out there that gets us to the end of this first lesson and introduction to pleadings in litigation