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Discovery, in the law of common law jurisdictions, is a phase of pretrial procedure in a lawsuit in which each party, through the law of civil procedure, can obtain evidence from other parties. This is by means of methods of discovery such as interrogatories , requests for production of documents , requests for admissions and depositions .
Civil discovery under United States federal law is wide-ranging and can involve any material which is relevant to the case except information which is privileged, information which is the work product of the opposing party, or certain kinds of expert opinions. (Criminal discovery rules may differ from those discussed here.)
Title II covers commencement of civil suits and includes filing, summons, and service of process. Rule 3 provides that a civil action is commenced by filing a complaint with the court. Rule 4 deals with procedure for issuance of a summons, when the complaint is filed, and for the service of the summons and complaint on the defendants.
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.
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 both kinds of action the other party is known as ...
A civil investigative demand (CID) is a discovery tool used by a number of executive agencies in the United States to obtain information relevant to an investigation. By contrast with other discovery mechanisms, CIDs are typically issued before a complaint has been filed by the government in order to commence a lawsuit against the recipient of the CID. [1]
ESI has become a legally defined phrase as the U.S. government determined for the purposes of the FRCP rules of 2006 that promulgating procedures for maintenance and discovery for electronically stored information was necessary. References to “electronically stored information” in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) invoke an ...
This duty is subject to certain exceptions, as outlined in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; furthermore, the rules applicable in state courts vary from state to state. Pursuant to U.S. constitutional law, in what is known as Brady disclosure, a prosecutor has a duty to disclose material evidence that is favorable to a criminal defendant's ...