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Defendants, civil rights organizations, public interest organizations, and government public officials can all set up an account to pay for litigation costs and legal expenses. These legal defense funds can have large membership counts where the members contribute to the fund. Unlike legal financing from legal financing companies, legal defense ...
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Both sides (regardless of relative monetary resources) often have a strong incentive to settle to avoid the costs (such as legal fees, finding expert witnesses, etc.), the time and the stress associated with a trial, particularly where a trial by jury is available. Generally, one side or the other will make a settlement offer early in litigation.
Civil and criminal cases are usually heard in different courts. In jurisdictions based on English common-law systems, the party bringing a criminal charge (in most cases, the state) is called the "prosecution", but the party bringing most forms of civil action is the " plaintiff " or " claimant ".
In the United States, the expression "civil courts" is used as a shorthand for "trial courts in civil cases". [13] [14] In England and other common-law countries, the burden of proof in civil proceedings is, in general—with a number of exceptions such as committal proceedings for civil contempt—proof on a balance of probabilities. [15]
Early federal and state civil procedure in the United States was rather ad hoc and was based on traditional common law procedure but with much local variety. There were varying rules that governed different types of civil cases such as "actions" at law or "suits" in equity or in admiralty; these differences grew from the history of "law" and "equity" as separate court systems in English law.
The rationale for the English rule is that a litigant (whether bringing a claim or defending a claim) is entitled to legal representation and, if successful, should not be left out of pocket by reason of their own legal fees. It should be borne in mind that, in virtually all English civil litigation, damages are merely compensatory.