Skip to main content

Search

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 9.2.16 Duration of the Decree

The parties can determine, through negotiations, whether an injunction is intended to be permanent. For example, a defendant may agree to be subject to a court order only for a specified period or until the vestiges of the illegal action are remedied. At the expiration of such a period, the decree may be vacated and the action dismissed.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 9.2.17 Retention of Jurisdiction

If the order is designated as a permanent injunction and signed by the court, a party to the original action (including a class member) may bring an enforcement action by filing an appropriate motion in the “old” case rather than by instituting a new action. Nonetheless, specifying that the court retains jurisdiction to ensure the court’s power to hear the enforcement action is necessary.4433 The period during which the court retains jurisdiction should at least be commensurate with any required reporting.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 9.2.19 Specifying Noncompliance Procedures and Remedies

While failing to identify the consequences of noncompliance may not hurt in the case of a formal consent decree because plaintiffs retain the full panoply of enforcement remedies, such specification may be critical in other contexts. Regardless of the form of settlement, specifying noncompliance remedies is often helpful in facilitating compliance. For example, when individual problems in the application of the decree are anticipated, particularly when they may involve lengthy factual disputes, such as in special education cases, specifying a hearing mechanism may be helpful.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 4.1.1 Pre-Litigation Investigation

Pre-filing investigation may include client interviews, interviews of witnesses, review of public and other records, correspondence with opposing parties, and requests for information pursuant to public records or Freedom of Information Act provisions. When possible, use pre-litigation investigation rather than formal discovery to establish facts.1240 Even when the investigation requires the cooperation of adverse parties, that cooperation is more likely to be forthcoming before suit is filed.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 1.4.4 Informal Investigation

The goal of a pre-filing factual investigation is twofold. First, you must understand the facts so that you can advocate most effectively. Second, you can obtain evidence for trial or leads on information to request in discovery. Evidentiary constraints should not restrict your informal investigation. Although you should attempt to obtain the most credible form of information available by, for example, notarizing witness statements or locating original documents, obtaining witness statements containing hearsay or unauthenticated documents is acceptable.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 7.1.1 Probability of Success on the Merits

Counsel’s assessment of the strength of a case on the merits is always a factor in deciding whether to bring a case, whether framed as a class action or not.3348 However, this decision takes on more weight, as a judgment in a class action will likely have preclusive effect for class members named or described in the judgment.3349 If plaintiffs win, relief will benefit all affected individuals, including class members with very small claims who might not otherwise sue.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 6.3.9 Rule 12 Motions to Dismiss

Often, a defendant will file a motion to dismiss the action pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b). The Rule allows a defendant to challenge alleged lack of personal or subject-matter jurisdiction, improper venue, or insufficient process or service of process; or the failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted or the improper failure to join a party.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 4.2.1 Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11 authorizes federal courts to issue sanctions against parties or their attorneys who file pleadings, motions, or other papers that are filed for an improper purpose or lack a required level of evidentiary or legal support.1293 Rule 11 sanctions are not available for other sorts of misconduct, like discovery abuse or actions during a trial.1294 The aim of Rule 11 is to deter frivolous filings, to “curb abuses of the judicial system,”

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 1.4.6 Impact, Law-Reform, and Test-Case Litigation

Your primary purpose in bringing litigation may be to get your individual client the relief to which she is entitled under the law. Or, you may have a much broader purpose. You may want to ensure that the legal violation does not recur, to compensate past victims of the illegal action, or to change the law. When the outcome of your case will affect large numbers of people, your suit may be considered impact litigation. When the goal of your litigation is to change the law or the way the law is interpreted and applied, your suit may be considered law-reform or test-case litigation.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 8.1.1 Enforcing Federal Rights Against States

Under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution, state laws or actions violating federal law are invalid.3828 Yet, the Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution provides states with immunity from private suits in federal court.3829 The Supreme Court has said this immunity serves to prevent not only federal court judgments but also “the indignity of subjecting a State to the coercive process of judicial tribunals at the instance of private parties.”

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 8.2.1 Absolute Immunity

By its terms, Section 1983 imposes liability without defense on state and local officials who, acting under color of law in their individual capacity, deprive plaintiffs of rights created by the Constitution and federal law. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court, drawing on common law, created absolute immunity from liability for some government officials and qualified immunity for others. Absolute and qualified immunity were developed to protect officials from lawsuits for actions relating to their official duties. The Court explained the underlying rationale for immunity:

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 3.3.1 Considering Mootness

Generally, a case is not moot so long as the plaintiff continues to have an injury for which the court can award relief—a “concrete interest, however small, in the outcome of the litigation.”1055 As a result, advocates should carefully consider the types of relief a client may have grounds to seek, whether for prospective relief or damages.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 5.1.1 Section 1983

The Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts, enacted during the 1860s and 1870s, provide the right to bring an action in federal court for violations of federal civil rights by state or local officials, by private parties acting in concert with the state, or, in more limited situations, by private parties acting alone.1464 The most important of these statutes is Section 1983.1465 Section 1983 creates no substantive rights. Rather, it creates a vehicle for enforcing existing federal rights.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 5.4.4 Availability of Equitable Relief in Suits Against Government Agencies and Officials

By contrast, the federal courts continue to be receptive to litigants seeking equitable relief in suits against government agencies and officials. The availability of equitable relief to enforce the Constitution against executive action is well established. Implied injunctive relief to enforce federal statutes may also be available but is more likely to be precluded by alternative remedial schemes.2140

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 8.3.1 The Requirement of a Policy, Practice, or Custom

To impose liability on a local government entity under § 1983, a plaintiff is required to identify a municipal policy, practice or custom that caused the deprivation of federal rights and plaintiffs’ injuries.4205 Monell v. New York City Department of Social Services establishes the principle that a municipality is not immune from suit under §1983 but can only be held liable for actions for which it is directly responsible.4206 Monell overruled a previous U.S.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 7.3.3 Time Frame

The applicable statute of limitations determines whether to define the class to include individuals harmed before the filing of the case and the cut-off dates to use in determining eligibility for the class. However, the inclusion of class members in a putative class whose individual claims may be subject to affirmative defenses, such as a statute of limitations, does not preclude class certification so long as common issues of law or fact are otherwise present.3652

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 9.2.9 Declaratory Relief

Declaring plaintiffs’ rights under specified provisions of law or based on particular facts serves plaintiffs’ interests by setting out the legal standard against which future compliance and unanticipated changes can be assessed.4409 Even if the declaration is by agreement rather than based on a prior adjudication of liability, a stated declaration of law may have some precedential effect, at least of a persuasive nature, in subsequent related cases against the same or a similar agency.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 2.6.6 Statutory Codification of Supplemental Jurisdiction

Congress responded to Finley278 in 1990 by enacting 28 U.S.C. § 1367. The supplemental jurisdiction statute retains the basic division described by the Supreme Court in Gibbs between the power of a court to entertain a pendent claim and the discretionary authority of a court to decline to exercise that power. However, in codifying supplemental jurisdiction, Congress also chose to incorporate several of the discretionary factors that warrant declining jurisdiction.279

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 2.7.2 General Removal--28 U.S.C. § 1441

As a threshold matter, it is useful to remember, as the Fourth Circuit observed, that, “[r]emoval statutes do not create jurisdiction. They are instead a mechanism to enable federal courts to hear the cases that are already within their original jurisdiction.”328 Removal provides a federal forum to defendants wishing to litigate federal claims in federal rather than state court and to defendants in diversity cases filed in the plaintiff’s home state court.

Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys: 2.8.17 Practice Considerations

Simultaneously filing identical § 1983 suits in state and federal courts potentially invites Colorado River abstention. Likewise, pursuing state administrative hearings that run parallel to federal litigation may also encourage defendants to raise Colorado River abstention. In the case of state administrative hearings, advocates should carefully consider whether the administrative hearing is truly “parallel” to the federal proceeding.