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Civil Procedure

Faculty Articles

St. Mary’s University School of Law

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The Anti-Plaintiff Pending Amendments To The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And The Pro-Defendant Composition Of The Federal Rulemaking Committees, Patricia W. Moore Jan 2015

The Anti-Plaintiff Pending Amendments To The Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure And The Pro-Defendant Composition Of The Federal Rulemaking Committees, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

For decades, the Civil Rules Advisory Committee (Advisory Committee) has garnered passage of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that have incrementally narrowed discovery in the service of the Advisory Committee's stated effort to combat the alleged "cost and delay" of civil litigation. More of the same are on their way to Congress now. In the classical David-and-Goliath lawsuit brought by an individual person against an institutional defendant, these pending amendments hurt David and help Goliath more than any previous round of amendments to the FRCP. The individual versus institution case, not coincidentally, is the most common …


The Civil Caseload Of The Federal District Courts, Patricia W. Moore Jan 2015

The Civil Caseload Of The Federal District Courts, Patricia W. Moore

Faculty Articles

This Article responds to changes proposed by Congress and the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules to restrict civil lawsuits by reforming procedure. It argues that while these changes are purported to be based on empirical studies, there is no reference to actual government statistics about whether the civil caseload has grown, whether the median disposition time has increased, or whether the most prevalent types of civil cases have changed. Based on statistics published by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, this Article shows that the civil docket has actually stagnated, not exploded. It first looks at trends in …