Can a lawsuit naming multiple defendants be partially dismissed? If John Doe commits some tort against Mary Jones, and Bob Smith is uninvolved, but Mary sues both John and Bob (Jones v. Doe and Smith when the suit should just be Jones v. Doe), what happens? She has a legal reason to sue John, but her suing Bob is frivolous.
Can a lawsuit naming multiple defendants be partially dismissed? Yes. This happens routinely. As one random example, in a recent 7th Circuit case, there was no doubt that the Plaintiff had stated a legally valid claim against two off-duty Indianapolis officers who choked a bar patron unconscious, dragged him facedown to parking lot, beat him still further, emptied his wallet, and left him covered in blood. But, the Plaintiff also named the city that employed them in its municipal police department when they were on duty as a defendant. The trial court denied the city's motion to dismiss, and a jury awarded $1.2 million of damages against the city as well. The 7th Circuit, however, held that the trial court should have dismissed the City that employed them as a defendant, since it did not have legal liability for the off duty conduct of its officers, and the City further purged itself of any claim that it adopted a policy tolerating this conduct when it fired the officers after learning of the incident. On the other hand, a plaintiff can sue defendants in the alternative and only has to dismiss a defendant when it is clear that no reasonably jury could hold that particular defendant liable. For example, suppose that a house with a structural carpentry defect was built by two framing contractors. It is clear that the defective work was all done by a single framing contractor and that it was defective, but there aren't good records of which contractor did what work. The Plaintiff can properly sue both framing contractors in the alternative for the damages caused by the defective framing work, and can leave it to the jury to decide on the merits which of the two did the defective work if the question isn't cleared upon unequivocally before then.
For most civil matters the answer is "no". Small claims court is special since there are restrictions on using attorneys, and in that context, it depends on the rules. In Indiana, the answer in their manual is no Small Claims Rule 8 allows a person to appear at trial and, if he or she chooses, represent himself or herself and avoid the cost of hiring an attorney. However, a person is allowed to hire an attorney and have the attorney appear with him or her at the trial. A person who has power of attorney for another person may not represent that person in court. "Have the attorney appear with him or her at the trial" is pretty unclear, since it doesn't say whether the attorney can represent them. Rule 8(C)(1) states that "A natural person may appear pro se or by counsel in any small claims proceeding", which clarifies that they don't just mean "have at your side". In Minnesota, the answer is more emphatic "no": A power of attorney does not authorize a nonlawyer to file a claim, appear, or in any other way “represent” a natural person in conciliation court. As for allowing attorneys in small claims court, Attorneys are only allowed to represent parties in conciliation court with permission of the court (emphasis added). The situation in California is somewhat of a hybrid, but as I read it, it means that the incapacitated person is out of luck, which strikes me as surprising. They say Self-representation is usually required. There are, however, several exceptions to this general rule: If the court determines that a party is unable to properly present his or her claim or defense for any reason, the court may allow another individual to assist that party. The individual who helps you can only provide assistance—the individual’s participation in court cannot amount to legal representation, and the person can’t be an attorney. So this is most unlike Indiana is that you can't have an attorney, and all the person can do is "assist". So unless they just waive the rules, this means that if the individual is incapacitated, they cannot have recourse to small claims court.
In general, you cannot neither change contracts nor restrict/nullify other people's rights by your acts alone. The people who hired you personally have a contract with you, not with your LLC. So, if someone has a claim against you, then their claim should not be contingent of your LLC going bankrupt or not; they have a right to have their damages restored by you (who was the entity they hired). Otherwise, fraud/liability delinquency would be trivial: get debts on your name and, when the things get difficult, create a shell LLC and let it go bankrupt.
Of course The prosecution just needs to prove that the crime happened (or the defendant believed it to have happened) and you helped (in brief, there will be specific elements of the crime that each need to be proved). This would be easier if the primary crime had a convicted perpetrator but it’s not impossible without. Allow me to illustrate with an example. I will set out facts which are somewhat contrived and would not be so clear cut in a real case but for the purposes of the example please take them as undisputed and fully supported by evidence. John and Jill are in a relationship. This relationship is well known to be argumentative with frequent shouting matches and one or the other storming out. This does not amount to domestic violence by either party. John's friend Alan believes (wrongly) that there is domestic violence. During an argument Jill drops dead of a heart attack. John rings Alan distraught and says "I've killed her." Alan assumes (wrongly) that John has murdered Jill. Alan says "i'll take care of it. You go to your dad's". Alan (alone) disposes of the body. John is not guilty of murder (or indeed, anything). Alan is guilty of accessory to murder even though the actual crime never happened. The fact that Alan believed it happened is enough.
When it is a mistake of memory, and not intentional (as this question is asking), there are no clear standards, and it is largely up to prosecutorial discretion. This means that whatever factors affect prosecutorial discretion (such as the prosecutor knowing who they have to work with on other days) can become significant in the determination. A prosecutor who announced this decision also specifically noted that it's up to the prosecutor to decide each case separately, with no guidance on fact patterns that could influence the decision either way. The Washington Post Magazine covered this question somewhat in depth several years ago, arriving at that conclusion. This was a surprise to me, but the article seems like a good resource on this - the question turns out to be more interesting and less resolved than it first appeared to be.
The defense lawyer has the duty to do the best for his client. The client will be convicted if he or she is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If the lawyer can create a reasonable doubt and manages to free his client then he has done a good job. So yes, if the lawyer knows that some other person might have committed the crime, to the degree that it creates reasonable doubt, then the lawyer must raise this. Of course if it turns out that there is just some phantasist making wild accusations, that might not be helpful.
As I understand it, you can pretty much sue anybody for anything. The question, of course, is would you win the suit? All the lawyers here can correct me, but I believe in order to win, you would have to Show standing, that is, they're your comments and not someone else's Show that it's a deliberate act, and not just someone accidentally clicked the wrong checkbox. Show that it was an act by the agency and not by Facebook, for example. Show that you've been singled out for your viewpoint (they allow some people's comments) Show that there is no other reason to delete your comments (they're obscene, or advocate for an illegal act, for example). I'm probably missing something else. The real question is, even if you could demonstrate all these things, would it be worth it? You may spend $1,000's and you might not recover your legal fees. The case might take years.
The standard in civil trials is "on the balance of probabilities" or "more likely than not." This is often expressed as "more than 50% likely", but this question is meant to provide an edge case to this standard of proof. Despite one person being provably innocent, could all 3 people be found civilly liable for 1/3 of the damages, since each individual has a 67% chance of having committed the crime? General Rule: No Generally speaking, the answer is "no". A plaintiff must prove liability by a preponderance of the evidence as to each individual defendant. This flows from the basic structure of tort lawsuits (a civil claim alleging damages suffered from criminal acts is a form of tort lawsuit). The Narrow Market Share Liability Exception There is pretty much only one circumstance where something similar to your example. But, it isn't strictly analogous because it only applies when all of the defendants can be proven to have harmed some of the plaintiffs and the only question outstanding is who harmed whom. Defendants may be innocent of harming some of the plaintiffs, but can't be innocent of harming any of them, to face liability in this scenario. This occurs which is when a class action lawsuit is brought against all (or almost all) of the multiple separate defendants who manufactured the products of the same type, all of which were defective. A manufacturer of a defective product is strictly liable for all harm caused by the defective product, but usually a plaintiff must show precisely which defendant's product caused that particular person's injury. But, in the class action context, where (almost) all of the people who made the defective products are sued by (almost) all of the people who were injured by defective products of that type, courts have allowed the class to recover an amount calculated to represent the aggregate economic value of the damages suffered by all members of the class combined. Then, the aggregate damages award is allocated among the defendants in proportion to their market share of the defective product. Then, the amounts paid to the class by the various defendants are then allocated to members of the class based upon the estimated damages suffered by each subgroup of class members (or in separate case by case damages hearings). This is an exception to the usual requirement to prove causation against each individual defendant in the case of each individual plaintiff, because the risk of injustice by the process overall to any given defendant is small, and requiring proof of causation in this situation creates a burden on plaintiffs that lacks the justification that it would have if the injured parties had sued on a piecemeal basis. But, this only works when the defect in the product was shared by everyone who made that kind of product, and was not simply a "quality control" issue in the manufacturing process. For example, this kind of market share causation could be appropriate against all makers of tobacco products or asbestos or lead based paint. But, it would not be appropriate in a product liability case where some cars with built with substandard parts while others were built with parts that met the specifications for the cars and those that were did not cause any harm.