Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b):

By presenting to the court (whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating) a pleading, written motion, or other paper, an attorney or unrepresented party is certifying that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances,--

(1) it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass or to cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation;

(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions therein are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law....

Abuse of Process:

Abuse of process is a common law intentional tort. It is to be distinguished from malicious prosecution another type of tort that involves misuse of the public right of access to the courts.

The elements of a valid cause of action of abuse of process in most common law jurisdictions are as follows: it is the malicious and deliberate misuse or perversion of regularly issued court process (civil or criminal) not justified by the underlying legal action. The person bringing the suit is only interested in accomplishing some improper purpose that is collateral to the object of the process and which offends justice such as unjustified arrests, criminal procecutions, subpoenas to testify, attachmentsto property, executions on property, garnishments and other provisional remedies can be considered to be capable of abuse.

Frivolous Lawsuit:

A lawsuit is termed frivolous if it is brought in spite of the fact that both the plaintiff and his lawyer knew that it had no merit and it did not argue for a reasonable extension or reinterpretation of the law or no underlying justification in fact based upon the lawyer's due dilligence investigation of the case before filing (i.e. the well known U.S. Federal Rule 11). Since it wastes the court's and the other people's time, resources and legal fees, it may result in sanctions being levied by the court upon the party or the lawyer who brings the action.
Bill O'Reilly:

Even O'Reilly conceded that "we never thought we were going to win the lawsuit. We wanted to expose the vicious tactics being used by the far left."

Discuss.

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