Parties - Parties In Lawsuits, Parties As Adversaries, Legal Entities That Can Be Parties, The Capacity To Sue Or Be Sued
litigants litigation cooperative persons
The persons who are directly involved or interested in any act, affair, contract, transaction, or legal proceeding; opposing litigants.
Persons who enter into a contract or other transactions are considered parties to the agreement. When a dispute results in litigation, the litigants are called parties to the lawsuit. U.S. law has developed principles that govern the rights and duties of parties. In addition, principles such as the standing doctrine determine whether a person is a rightful party to a lawsuit. Also, additional parties may be added to legal proceedings once litigation has begun.
FURTHER READINGS
Cohen, Alan G., et al, eds. 1992. The Living Law: A Guide to Modern Legal Research. Rochester, N.Y.: Lawyers Cooperative.
Kraut, Jayson, et al. 1983. American Jurisprudence. Rochester, N.Y.: Lawyers Cooperative.
Additional Topics
The U.S. legal system is based on the adversarial process, which requires parties to a legal proceeding to contend against each other. From this contest of competing interests, the issues are presented to the court and fully argued. In the end, one of the parties will obtain a favorable result. The U.S. Supreme Court has developed the standing doctrine to determine whether the litigants in a feder…
Only an actual legal entity may initiate a lawsuit. A natural person is a legal entity, for example, and any number of people can be parties on either side of a lawsuit. A corporation is endowed by its charter with existence as a separate legal entity. A business partnership is usually not considered a legal entity, but generally it can sue or be sued in the partnership name or in the names of the…
A person must have the requisite legal capacity to be a party to a lawsuit. Some people are considered non sui juris: they do not possess full civil and social rights under the law. A child is non sui juris because the law seeks to protect the child from his or her improvidence until the child reaches the age of majority. A child who has not reached the age of majority has a legal disability. Othe…
Usually a plaintiff decides when, where, and whom she or he wants to sue. In some cases a plaintiff may wish to join, or add, other parties after the start of the lawsuit. Proper parties and necessary or indispensable parties may be added while the action is pending. Whether a person is potentially necessary or indispensable to an action depends on the character and extent of that person's …
For example, a restaurant patron who becomes ill after eating a ham dinner can sue the restaurant. The patron is the plaintiff, and the restaurant is the defendant. The restaurant may want to implead the meat-packing company that furnished the ham, if it believes that the meat was tainted before it was delivered to the restaurant. The restaurant cannot avoid being a defendant, but it can cover its…
A person can volunteer to become a party in a lawsuit by a procedure called intervention. A person might wish to intervene in a lawsuit if he or she has an interest that will be affected by the outcome of the case and the person believes that this interest will not be adequately protected by the other parties. An intervenor must make the request to intervene in a motion to the court. Timing is imp…
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