Whereas criminal cases are initiated by state or federal officials who believe that a person has violated a criminal statute, a civil lawsuit can be brought by anyone who believes that another party has harmed their interests in some way and they want the court to force the other party to fi...
A libel case is a civil lawsuit filed by an individual who says they have been harmed by false statements written by another individual. The purpose of such suits are generally to force the retraction of the false statement and to obtain damages for the harm done by those statements. Is lib...
In 2015, the firm began work with two campaign groups — ArchCity Defenders and Civil Rights Corps — to file a class action against the city of Ferguson, Missouri, for illegally jailing people who failed to pay fines for minor offences. In 2022, the class action was certified by a judge...
In the 1992 case ofSt. Mary's Honor Center et al. v. Hicks,a halfway house employee alleged that he was discharged because of his race, violating theCivil Rights Act of 1964. When tried in District Court, the employee established a prima facie case of discrimination but was found to ha...
If you own a trademark and someone else has infringed upon your mark, you would usually address the issue with a civil lawsuit. If your trademark infringement case involves the trade of counterfeit products, criminal penalties may also apply....
Perpetrators of criminal fraud may be punished by fines and/or imprisonment. Victims of civil fraud may file lawsuits against the perpetrator seeking monetary compensation. To win a lawsuit claiming civil fraud, the victim must have suffered actual damages. In other words, the fraud must have bee...
The issue of tort reform relates to the critical stance taken against many tort cases, especially in the United States. Proponents of tort reform argue that many lawsuits today are frivolous. According to the Court Statistics Project, approximately 12.5 million civil lawsuits were filed in state tr...
Misconduct in civil litigation is not a new phenomenon. Nor is it confined to particular types of cases. Because of their characteristic intensity. however, intellectual property cases may be more likely to inspire bad behavior than other types of cases. The associated pressures seem, on occasion...
Racial segregation was largely outlawed during the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, but courts continue to litigate cases of racial segregation into the present. After decades of de facto housing and employment discrimination helped create heavily segregated neighbourhoods in Seatt...
In tort law, a tort is defined as a wrongful act or violation of a right, excluding a breach of contract, which causes loss, harm, or injury to another party and results in legal, civil liability. To expand on thedefinition of a tort, it is important to note that a tort can involve...