A lawsuit is a proceeding by one or more parties against one or more parties in a civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used with respect to a civil action brought by a plaintiff who requests a legal remedy or equitable remedy from a court. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint or else risk default judgment. If the plaintiff is successful, judgment is entered in favor of the defendant. A variety of court orders may be issued in connection with or as part of the judgment to enforce a right, award damages or restitution, or impose a temporary or permanent injunction to prevent an act or compel an act. A declaratory judgment may be issued to prevent future legal disputes.
Morton H. Halperin is a longtime expert on U.S. foreign policy, arms control, civil liberties, and the workings of bureaucracies.
A declaratory judgment, also called a declaration, is the legal determination of a court that resolves legal uncertainty for the litigants. It is a form of legally binding preventive by which a party involved in an actual or possible legal matter can ask a court to conclusively rule on and affirm the rights, duties, or obligations of one or more parties in a civil dispute. The declaratory judgment is generally considered a statutory remedy and not an equitable remedy in the United States, and is thus not subject to equitable requirements, though there are analogies that can be found in the remedies granted by courts of equity. A declaratory judgment does not by itself order any action by a party, or imply damages or an injunction, although it may be accompanied by one or more other remedies.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure govern civil procedure in United States district courts. They are the companion to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Rules promulgated by the United States Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act become part of the FRCP unless, within seven months, the United States Congress acts to veto them. The Court's modifications to the rules are usually based upon recommendations from the Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal judiciary's internal policy-making body.
United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953), is a landmark legal case decided in 1953, which saw the formal recognition of the state secrets privilege, a judicially recognized extension of presidential power. The US Supreme Court confirmed that "the privilege against revealing military secrets ... is well established in the law of evidence".
American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency, 493 F.3d 644, is a case decided July 6, 2007, in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to bring the suit against the National Security Agency (NSA), because they could not present evidence that they were the targets of the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program" (TSP).
United States v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), also known as the now famous Keith Case, was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision that upheld, in a unanimous 8-0 ruling, the requirements of the Fourth Amendment in cases of domestic surveillance targeting a domestic threat.
Northern Insurance Company of New York v. Chatham County, 547 U.S. 189 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case addressing whether state counties enjoyed sovereign immunity from private lawsuits authorized by federal law. The case involved an admiralty claim by an insurer against Chatham County, Georgia for its negligent operation of a drawbridge. The Court ruled unanimously that the county had no basis for claiming immunity because it was not acting as an "arm of the state."
Dennis Jacobs is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Los Angeles Times v. Free Republic, 56 U.S.P.Q.2d 1862, is a United States district court copyright law case. Several newspapers sued the Internet forum Free Republic for allowing its users to repost the full text of copyrighted newspaper articles, asserting that this constituted copyright infringement. Free Republic claimed that they were not liable under the doctrine of fair use and the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. The federal courts ruled in favor of the newspapers.
Connecticut v. Doehr, 501 U.S. 1 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a state statute authorizing prejudgment attachment of a defendant's real property upon the filing of an action without prior notice or hearing, a showing of extraordinary circumstances, or a requirement that the plaintiff post a bond violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511 (1985), was a United States Supreme Court case deciding on the issue of immunity of cabinet officers from suits from individuals.
A Doe subpoena is a subpoena that seeks the identity of an unknown defendant to a lawsuit. Most jurisdictions permit a plaintiff who does not yet know a defendant's identity to file suit against John Doe and then use the tools of the discovery process to seek the defendant's true name. A Doe subpoena is often served on an online service provider or ISP for the purpose of identifying the author of an anonymous post.
Cayuga Indian Nation of New York v. Pataki, 413 F.3d 266, is an important precedent in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the litigation of aboriginal title in the United States. Applying the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York (2005), a divided panel held that the equitable doctrine of laches bars all tribal land claims sounding in ejectment or trespass, for both tribal plaintiffs and the federal government as plaintiff-intervenor.
Al-Haramain v. Obama, 690 F.3d 1089 was a case before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California filed 28 February 2006 by the al-Haramain Foundation and its two attorneys concerning the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy. The case withstood retroactive changes brought by the Congressional response to the NSA warrantless surveillance program.
Jewel v. National Security Agency, 673 F.3d 902, was a class action lawsuit argued before the District Court for the Northern District of California and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of American citizens who believed that they had been surveilled by the National Security Agency (NSA) without a warrant. The EFF alleged that the NSA's surveillance program was an "illegal and unconstitutional program of dragnet communications surveillance" and claimed violations of the Fourth Amendment.
Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox is a 2011 case from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concerning online defamation. Plaintiffs Obsidian Finance Group and its co-founder Kevin Padrick sued Crystal Cox for maintaining several blogs that accused Obsidian and Padrick of corrupt and fraudulent conduct. The court dismissed most of Cox's blog posts as opinion, but found one single post to be more factual in its assertions and therefore defamatory. For that post, the court awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. This case is notable for the court's ruling that Cox, as an internet blogger, was not a journalist and was thus not protected by Oregon's media shield laws, although the court later clarified that its ruling did not categorically exclude blogs from being considered media and indicated that its decision was based in part upon Cox offering to remove negative posts for a $2,500 fee. In January 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court affirmed in part and reversed in part the district court's judgment awarding compensatory damages to the bankruptcy trustee. It also ordered a new trial on the blog post at issue.
Bank Markazi v. Peterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case that found that a law which only applied to a specific case, identified by docket number, and eliminated all of the defenses one party had raised does not violate the separation of powers in the United States Constitution between the legislative (Congress) and judicial branches of government. The plaintiffs, in the case had initially obtained judgments against Iran for its role in supporting state-sponsored terrorism, particularly the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and sought execution against a bank account in New York held, through European intermediaries, on behalf of Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The plaintiffs obtained court orders preventing the transfer of funds from the account in 2008 and initiated their lawsuit in 2010. Bank Markazi raised several defenses, including that the account was not an asset of the bank, but rather an asset of its European intermediary, under both New York state property law and §201(a) of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act. In response to concerns that existing laws were insufficient for the account to be used to settle the judgments, Congress added an amendment to a 2012 bill, codified after enactment as 22 U.S.C. § 8772, that identified the pending lawsuit by docket number, applied only to the assets in the identified case, and effectively abrogated every legal basis available to Bank Markazi to prevent the plaintiffs from executing their claims against the account. Bank Markazi then argued that § 8772 was an unconstitutional breach of the separation of power between the legislative and judicial branches of government, because it effectively directed a particular result in a single case without changing the generally applicable law. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, on appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit both upheld the constitutionality of § 8772 and cleared the way for the plaintiffs to execute their judgments against the account, which held about $1.75 billion in cash.
Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States clarified whether a case becomes moot when a party provides a settlement offer that satisfies a named plaintiff's claims in a class action suit and whether a government contractor is entitled to "derivative sovereign immunity".
Opati v. Republic of Sudan, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act with its 2008 amendments, whether plaintiffs in federal lawsuits against foreign countries may seek punitive damages for cause of actions prior to enactment of the amended law, with the specific case dealing with victims and their families from the 1998 United States embassy bombings. The Court ruled unanimously in May 2020 that punitive damages can be sought from foreign nations in such cases for preenactment conduct.
