USA Law and Practice Contributed by: John Desmond, Alexis Taitel, Alice Samberg, Mackenzie Robinson and Peter Dragovich, Dickinson Wright PLLC
way, the parties may end up needing more time than expected to wrap up all discovery efforts once the motion is ultimately decided. So discovery deadlines and trial dates may be pushed out, further extending the litigation and driving up costs. Once it is time for trial, again, criminal matters may be prioritised, further pushing out civil trial dates. In light of these considerations, alternative dispute resolution methods – like mediation and arbitration – are gaining significant traction. Such methods tend to be more cost-effective and efficient, with disputes being resolved faster than through the standard course of litigation. A limitations period is the timeframe within which a party must bring a claim before it expires. The limita- tions periods that apply to bringing different claims vary by jurisdiction and are typically set by statute. Generally speaking, contract-based claims have long- er statutes of limitation, whereas tort-based claims (such as negligence in a personal-injury action) have shorter periods. This is because a claim involving some kind of personal injury is likely to be known earlier than the potential harm resulting from a con- tract violation, which may take some time to become evident. Some statutes of limitation are counted from when the injured party discovers the injury, while others are counted from the time the harm actually occurred. 2.2 Court Structure In the United States, there are many types of courts (including federal, state, municipal, and tribal, as well as administrative tribunals), but the primary two are federal and state. Courts are structured in tiers, with trial courts (sometimes called “district courts”) as the lowest level courts having the broadest scope of juris- diction. Trial court decisions can be appealed to the next level appellate court; usually some kind of inter- mediate court of appeals. The highest-level courts are supreme courts, which have the narrowest jurisdic- tion. This three-tiered composition of district courts, 2. Litigation 2.1 Limitation Periods
intermediate appellate courts, and supreme courts is prevalent in both the federal and state systems. State courts are considered courts of general jurisdic- tion, meaning that they can hear the broadest spec- trum of cases. Federal courts, on the other hand, are limited to the jurisdiction delineated by the United States Constitution. This means that certain claims cannot be raised in federal court and must be brought exclusively in state-court proceedings. This arises from the fundamental American principle of feder- alism, which recognises that states should oversee more state-specific issues, while the federal gov- ernment should manage broader issues that extend beyond states’ borders. 2.3 Pre-Action Conduct Certain types of claims may contain exhaustion requirements mandating that a litigant first fully exhausts available administrative remedies before fil- ing a lawsuit. Such requirements are typically set by statute. In the context of prisoners’ civil rights claims, for instance, inmate plaintiffs must demonstrate that they have pursued relief through the prison’s internal processes before resorting to court action. Exhaustion requirements are also common in the discrimination context, in which parties must first attempt to resolve their disputes through administrative bodies – like an equal employment agency – before filing a lawsuit in a court. This is, again, an attempt to ease the burden on courts and limit their caseload. Allowing adminis- trative agencies the initial opportunity to resolve dis- putes yields a more specialised approach to dispute resolution because the factfinders of administrative agencies routinely deal with similar types of disputes and can therefore more efficiently resolve them. 2.4 Stages of Court Proceedings In the United States, the main stages of court pro- ceedings are the initial case assessment (analysing potential strategies and ways forward), the pleading stage (when a lawsuit is filed), the discovery phase (when parties actively develop the record and learn about the facts supporting or refuting their positions), the summary-judgment stage (when parties defend their positions and attempt to either prove or defend the underlying claims), the trial phase (when parties present all of their evidence, including documents and
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