Court trials explained (3
parts)
Robert Carper
Part one: pleadings
Pleadings are
statements in which parties to a lawsuit accuse and respond. Pleadings accuse
of wrongdoing or deny and excuse a wrongdoing. There is no proof in the
pleadings, only claims that something happened or didn’t happen as well as
legal conclusions and requests for something from the court.
Pleadings are about
allegations, not evidence or proof. Saying someone drove through a red light is
an allegation. Saying you saw it with your own eyes is evidence. You only put
the first in the pleadings, not the second. The purpose of pleadings is tell
the other side what you intend to prove later, at trial. In Ontario, pleadings
consist of a statement of claim, a statement of defense, and a reply.
You put material (relevant)
facts and legal conclusions following from these facts in your pleadings. The
legal conclusions must support your request to the court. The purpose of a
lawsuit is get a court order. Your facts and legal conclusions, if proven, must
give the court the power to make the order you request. Running through a red
light is a material fact; negligence is a legal conclusion. You cannot claim
negligence in your claim without stating material facts supporting the legal
conclusion.
Part two: discovery
After the parties
exchange accusations and responses, the law expects them to exchange all
evidence they have to support their accusations and responses. This is
discovery. There are two parts to it: documents and questions and answers in
person. Both are under oath and both become part of the record of the lawsuit.
So the parties can use evidence they discover during this stage to prove their
case at trial.
The parties must
disclose only relevant documents and answer only relevant questions. Relevance
depends on the pleadings, and this is another reason why pleadings are so
important. Suppose you allege that someone was negligent because they ran
through a red light. Then that person’s political views are not relevant and
you cannot expect them to disclose documents or answer questions about their
politics. Both the document and the Q&A (known in Ontario as
examination for discovery) parts of discovery happen out of court. Parties
disclose their documents in sworn affidavits, and examinations under oath take
place in private offices.
In theory, after the
pleadings are closed and the discoveries are completed, the parties should have
a pretty exhaustive idea of what’s going to happen at trial. They know the
claim and defence, they know the evidence, they know the law. They should be
able to predict what the court will decide fairly well. This is one reason why
most civil cases settle before trial. But some do go to the final hearing,
either because the evidence is ambiguous or because the law is not fully
settled. Or for a million other reasons—we are humans and nothing is ever 100%
certain.
Part three: trial
This is the first time
the court hears the case “on the merits.” In theory, the entire case could
continue until this point without any involvement of the court. (In reality,
lawyers spend a lot of time in court wrangling over procedural issues.)
Trial is where the
parties present their evidence to a judge or a jury. You usually present
evidence through a witness who has first-hand knowledge of what happened. Or
through an expert who has a professional opinion of what happened, if the issue
requires such an opinion. But involvement of humans makes trials unpredictable.
No one can be certain what the witness will say and how it will affect this
particular judge or jury.
A good civil litigator
will conduct the first and the second stages of a lawsuit as if the trial was
unavoidable. A potential loss at trial is a powerful incentive for settlement.
(Unfortunately, the cost of trial and pre-trial procedures is another strong
incentive.) If you build a strong case for trial during pleadings and
discovery, it’s irrational to go to trial.
Of course, this is
only a superficial summary of what happens in a lawsuit.
