The term pleadings refer to the legal papers that are filed at the court at the start of a lawsuit. The fist document filed is the complaint.
That first document gives the outline of the complaint against the defendant.
• It names all the parties involved.
• It gives the legal basis for the court’s jurisdiction.
• It provides details on the plaintiff’s legal claim.
• Its content includes the facts, regarding the plaintiff’s case.
• Its content also includes a demand for judgment. In addition, it could state the nature of the plaintiff’s damages.
The purpose of the complaint
That particular document makes the facts clear to the defendant. It keeps the facts from becoming sketchy. Complaints, like a number of aspects of the legal system, work to provide the defendant with access to a fair process. The complaint, with its clear facts, must be submitted to the court by the deadline, as stated in the statute of limitations. That keeps the plaintiff from seeking to sue the defendant long after the time of the injury-causing accident.
If a plaintiff were allowed to wait, it would be harder for the defendant to gather all of the relevant evidence. If the facts of the case were not made clear in the complaint, defendants might not understand just what sort of evidence was needed.
In other words, the required contents of the complaint, along with the deadline that has been stated in the statute of limitations, complement each other. Together, they reinforce the effort by the legal system to provide the defendant with access to a fair process.
Some members of the public do not appreciate the extent to which the legal system works to establish a process that treats defendants fairly. Some members of the public focus on the demands of the various plaintiffs, and not the plaintiff’s obligations, in the eyes of the law. As a result, there are times when an injured victim does not go after the person that was responsible for his or her injury. At other times, the plaintiff’s hesitation allows the deadline to pass, before the necessary document has been submitted to the court.
In either of those cases, the defendant manages to escape the need to compensate the injured victim. By providing a defendant with an “escape route,” a plaintiff takes an approach that is unfair to those that have sided with the same plaintiff. In other words, the plaintiff’s complaint does not get stated in a formal complaint.
Injury Lawyers in Cambridge stand ready to keep that from happening. Still, their eagerness to try a case does not always guarantee the finding of clients. Yet it does provide an attorney with the skills needed for creating a complaint.
