Discussion Question 1: Ethical Considerations and Civil Complaint
- Those in the legal profession are bound by rules of evidence. Not following these could result in many issues, from loss of a case to loss of license to practice law. Here you will be looking at these rules.
- Your litigation partner has asked you to draft a civil complaint involving a breach of contract. After recognizing that many civil cases are resolved by settlement before trial, the partner has suggested that you add claims to the complaint that can later be traded away during the negotiation phase of the case. This is despite the fact that the added claims are not supported by facts. What are the issues that may arise because of this practice?
- Justify your ideas and responses by using appropriate examples and references from Westlaw (including primary sources such as cases, statutes, rules, and regulations), government websites, and peer-reviewed legal periodicals (not lawyer blogs), which can be supplemented by law dictionaries or the textbook. This means you need to use more than just your text and legal dictionaries.
Discussion Question 2: Federal Lawsuits
- Note there are two separate items here. Both need to be addressed. Both are federal lawsuits. In the first item, you are looking at how to prepare a diversity of citizenship complaint, and in the second item, you are looking at how to correct an error (also note, what type of error is this one) made in a federal pleading.
- Robert, a close friend of your litigation partner, has a claim that is worth approximately $45,000. You need to prepare a federal lawsuit grounded in diversity because the partner is not in favor of the procedural rules in the local state court and customarily practices in the federal district court. Discuss the issues that you will analyze. How will you proceed to prepare this lawsuit? In a different case, you prepared an answer to a suit that was brought to the federal district court. Six weeks after filing and serving the answer, you realized that you overlooked a compulsory counterclaim that the client had against the plaintiff. Discuss the procedures that you will undertake to resolve this error.
- Justify your ideas and responses by using appropriate examples and references from Westlaw (including primary sources such as cases, statutes, rules, and regulations), government websites, and peer-reviewed legal periodicals (not lawyer blogs), which can be supplemented by law dictionaries or the textbook. This means you need to use more than just your text and legal dictionaries.