A tort occurs when someone deliberately or through carelessness causes harm or loss to another person or another person’s property.

Civil litigation is a legal dispute between two or more parties that seeks damages or specific performance, rather than criminal sanctions. A lawyer in a civil litigation is commonly referred to as a trial lawyer or litigator. Civil litigation is not necessarily confined to a trial as it can also encompass hearings, arbitrations and mediations before administrative agencies, foreign tribunals and federal and state courts. Civil litigation covers a broad range of disputes falling within many different practice areas (a large number of these are identified in the above "civil law" Q&A) and, therefore, civil litigation takes many forms depending on the type of case. In general, civil litigation is the legal process that most people think of when the word "lawsuit" is used. Civil litigation, for the most part, has seven identifiable stages, those being investigation, pleadings, discovery, settlement, pretrial, trial and appeal. Not every stage of litigation is reached in every civil action; for example, most cases settle prior to trial and many trial verdicts are not appealed. Civil litigation can last a few months or several years and, comparatively speaking, civil litigators actually spend little time in trial as most of the time is devoted to the extremely labor intensive discovery stage.

A pleading is a formal document in which a party to a civil lawsuit or any other legal proceeding sets forth or responds to allegations, claims, denials or defenses. Typically, the initial pleadings in a civil lawsuit are the plaintiff’s complaint and the defendant’s answer.

All civil actions are subject to statutes of limitations, which may bar a case from being brought to trial, regardless of how good a case it was. Contact Kinara Law to determine the statute of limitations for your matter.