Commencing+a+Legal+Action

Commencing a Legal Action
Lawsuits do not begin themselves. Someone must first decide to sue someone else for an alleged injury. But before making the decision to sue, the potential litigant must first consider whether the injury is one for which the law furnishes a relief. If he believes so, he must next consider the probability of winning the lawsuit, i.e., whether he can find and bring to court the person who has injured him, and whether he can produce the witnesses and evidence that will prove the case. And then, perhaps most important of all, he must ask himself whether the lawsuit is worth the time, the effort and the expenses it will cost, or whether other alternatives, among them settlement, arbitration, self-help and letting matters rest, are better.
After all these factors have been considered and the potential litigant decides to commence a legal action, he must often consider to which court he should bring the case.
A lawsuit must be brought before a court that has the power to hear the case. The power to hear the case is known as jurisdiction, which has two aspects: jurisdiction over the subject matter and jurisdiction over the parties. The former means that the lawsuit must be of the type that the court was created to decide. A criminal court would have no jurisdiction in a divorce matter. A federal district court will not have jurisdiction over many disputes (disputes, for examples, over damages for breach of contract between citizens of one state), because the subject matter jurisdiction of federal courts is limited by the Constitution.
A court must also have jurisdiction over the parties. Its jurisdiction over the plaintiff is established when the plaintiff files the suit with the court and thus voluntarily submits to its jurisdiction.
Jurisdiction over the defendant is accomplished by the service of a summons issued by the court. Service of a summons is not much of a problem of the defendant is a citizen of the forum state. If this is not the case, the assertion of jurisdiction will have to depend on whether the defendant has minimum contacts with the state to satisfy the due process clause of the Constitution. If the defendant has no minimum contacts with the forum state, there will be no basis for jurisdiction over his person, and service cannot be affected.
Service of summons in a few cases may be affected by publishing a notice in a newspaper. Most cases, however, require the actual service of a summons to the defendant in order to give him notice of the suit.
V ery often, more than one court in a state have jurisdiction over a case. To select among them the question of venue must be considered. V enue relates to, and defines the particular territorial area within the state in which a legal action is to take place.
Matters of venue are usually determined by statute. For example, venue statutes in most states provide that actions concerning interests in land must be commenced and tried in the country or district in which the land is located. Suits for divorce must be commenced and tried in the country in which one of the parties resides.。