Can a court be a party in a civil lawsuit? Can a State or Federal court in the U.S. be a party in a civil lawsuit? I mean lawsuits completely unrelated to cases heard or adjudicated by the court, such as: A suit filed by a fired employee (e.g. a court stenographer), A suit filed by a utility company for late payments for electricity, A suit against a postal service that failed to deliver and lost court documents, etc. Is yes, then what courts have jurisdiction over such cases? Are there any special rules for such cases?
A court can neither sue nor be sued as it is not a legal person. The state (read government) can be (subject to sovereign immunity) in its administrative arm (i.e. not the judicial or legislative branches). For your particular examples: A suit filed by a fired employee (e.g. a court stenographer), the court has no employees. Court stenographers et al are employed by the administrative branch - the person who gets sued is the Secretary of State for the Justice Department (or whatever they are called). A suit filed by a utility company for late payments for electricity, Utility companies are not the government even if 100% government owned (most are privately owned anyway) - companies are their own legal person. A suit against a postal service that failed to deliver and lost court documents, etc. I do not know what the legal status of the US Postal Service is - it is either part of a government department ora government owned corporation - see above. The court is impartial because it is constitutionally required to be - it doesn't care who the plaintiff or defendant are.
The order of operations is important I assume that plaintiff filed for a Protective Order. To get this granted, the plaintiff has to allege some kind of wrongdoing and evidence of that. If the defendant responds, then the plaintiff can amend their filing. Then the defendant once more can respond to the allegations. If the plaintiff wants to amend the filing once more, they need to ask the court to be allowed to do so, and that opens the door for the defendant to answer once more. That's all history for the case presented: The court apparently found the evidence lacking and dismissed the application for a PO. Plaintiff can only file for reconsideration or appeal but not bring in new evidence at this point. Dismissed Cases are not automatically evidence A case that did not establish its burden of proof and was dismissed - especially with prejudice - has not established that the evidence in it is good. You have to ask each item to be admitted separately and re-establish that it is good evidence. A bulk filing &quot;I want to bring this case as evidence&quot; is generally denied unless you prevailed in that case. A dismissed case is one you didn't prevail in. Get a Lawyer! It seems like you are in serious need of legal counsel to clear up the situation. Contact a lawyer for at least a free consultation if you even have a case.
The U.S. Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to set everyday procedural rules in state court, although it can mandate processes that flow from the constitution. In criminal cases, this allows it to regulate courtroom conduct that is prejudicial to defendants. The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, has prohibited keeping criminal defendants facing trial in a cage in the courtroom as is common in many jurisdictions elsewhere in the world. The Rittenhouse case took place in state court, over which the U.S. Supreme Court has limited authority in such matters. On the other hand, the U.S. Supreme Court has broad authority to establish court rules in the federal courts and could adopt rules in those courts if it deemed fit, and if its proposed rules were not legislatively vetoed by Congress.
Isn't the the Appellate Division in NJ required to uphold the ruling of the Third Circuit in such matters? It is not. There can be no conflict on procedural issues between the Third Circuit, which is interpreting federal rules of civil and appellate procedure, and a ruling of a New Jersey court which is interpreting state rules of civil and appellate procedure. Different court systems have different procedural rules. Federal rules of procedure are inapplicable in state courts. State rules of procedure are inapplicable in federal courts. The circuit split referred to is between different federal appellate court circuits interpreting the federal rules of civil and appellate procedure. But none of those rules are applicable to state courts. Furthermore, even if a question of substantive federal law were involved, the state courts of New Jersey are only required to follow precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court and higher appellate courts in the New Jersey state court system. Decisions of the Third Circuit on questions of federal law are not binding on the courts of New Jersey despite the fact that New Jersey is located in the Third Circuit, even though they are persuasive authority on questions of substantive federal law that are equally applicable in both court systems.
No. As a superior sovereign, the United States can sue states in federal court without restriction. I’m not sure if that would apply in state court, but the federal government doesn’t generally file cases in state court to begin with. States can also sue each other in federal court, having waived their immunity to lawsuits brought by other states when they agreed to Article III of the Constitution (although Congress has said that these lawsuits must be filed directly in the Supreme Court).
There are both statutes and customs aimed at preventing "Malicious Prosecution" and "Abuse of Process." (In Pennsylvania, for example, the 1980 Dragonetti Act allows the victim of a frivolous lawsuit to counter-sue for compensatory damages.) One can also buy insurance against this type of risk: Umbrella liability policies will generally provide a defense against civil lawsuits and any damages awarded, as will many business insurance policies. Of course, none of this is to say that a skilled legal team can't avoid all of these countermeasures and, in practice, take up a significant amount of your time and trouble. We do not have a perfect system of justice.
It isn't that uncommon to do something similar to this, which is called a &quot;test case&quot;. One of the more familiar examples of this kind of litigation conduct is the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. There have been test cases, for example, that involved important questions of E.U. jurisdiction in civil law countries as well.
It is difficult to quantify in a useful way. Part of the issue is that calling the courts &quot;dispute resolution forums&quot; is misleading. Courts are &quot;rights enforcement forums.&quot; They are designed to provide remedies to people whose rights have been violated, not to neutrally resolve disputes between parties. And, most lawsuits are mostly one sided, not circumstances where both sides have legitimate grievances for which they seek redress. The vast majority of cases brought in courts, by raw number, are debt collection actions, evictions, and foreclosures. These cases are overwhelmingly brought by landlords against tenants and by lenders (mostly banks and big businesses that extend credit) against borrowers. I'll note those in bold. For example, in Colorado, in 2010, there were 116,346 civil cases filed in District Court in Colorado (the state trial court of general jurisdiction). Summary mortgage foreclosure actions accounted for 39,404 of those cases. State tax lien filings accounted for another 45,528 filings. These case make up 73% of the district court civil docket. There were 30,236 cases of other types on the District Court civil docket in the state. About 5,809 are claims that fit in the heartland of tort law: cases involving personal injuries including worker's compensation cases that end up in court) and wrongful deaths, breach of warranty, public nuisance, sexual harassment cases, fraud cases and malpractice cases (of all kinds) as well as motions to approve transfers of structured settlements. About 3,527 involve judicial efforts to establish title to or possession of specific pieces of property often in connection with the collection of a debt. A big portion of the remainder of the cases, 13,165 involve contractual disputes or rights in real estate or other property (a fair share of which are basically debt collection cases such as mechanic's lien foreclosures and large dollar non-payment of contractual debts that aren't seriously disputed). There were 722 appeals from municipal or county courts and 72 cases to confirm arbitration awards. There were 5 public utility cases, 236 cases reviewing acts by local governments and by government officials, and 31 special district cases, 470 declaratory judgment cases, 583 injunctive relief cases, 1,484 cases classified simply as &quot;other&quot;, 29 restraining order cases, and 334 contempt of court cases. These courts also handle divorces, child custody cases, paternity cases, probate cases, felony cases, and post-trial collateral attacks on criminal convictions. County courts in Colorado (at the time state courts with a $15,000 jurisdictional limit) had 148,425 debt collection money claims, 42,689 eviction cases, 531 cases to repossess personal property, 13,257 restraining order cases, 1,496 name change petitions, 27 purely administrative registrations of foreign judgments, and 529 cases classified as &quot;other.&quot; These courts also handle misdemeanors and traffic violation cases. About 93% of civil cases in county courts in Colorado are debt collection and eviction cases. Overwhelmingly, the landlords and money lenders win these laws and are more wealthy than the tenants and borrowers who overwhelmingly lose these lawsuits. A very larger share of the time these cases are lost by default. In very large share of the cases in which there is a default, it is because there is no viable defense: the promissory note or credit card was not paid as agreed, usually because the debtor was unable to pay it. In eviction cases, usually, the rent was not paid on time, often for the same reason. When there is not a default, there is usually a settlement or payment plan. We focus on the very rare cases that go to trial, but those are edge cases. There are good studies that show that defendants in debt collection and eviction lawsuits secure better results for themselves when they are represented by counsel, which they usually aren't, than when they are not. But defendants in debt collection and eviction lawsuits who are represented by counsel still usually lose anyway, just on somewhat less harsh terms. So, to do any nuanced analysis of the role played by affluence and wealth in litigation, you need to start by having a fairly sophisticated sense of what is and is not a win, and this is far from obvious. In contrast, tort lawsuits for personal injury are usually brought by ordinary individuals from all walks of life who get injured due to bad luck against either other ordinary individuals backed by the resources of an insurance company to defend and settle their cases, or against property owners, or against businesses. There is typically not an affluence divide in these cases, or if there is, the injured person is less affluent, and the injured person usually secured money from the person who they claim caused the injury, either at trial, or far more often, in settlement reached in the shadow of what would have happened if they case went to trial. Lawyers rarely commence personal injury lawsuits were there isn't a good argument that their client should win. Personal injury tort cases make up a thin sliver of cases filed and judgments entered relative to debt collection and evictions lawsuits. These cases make up about 2-3% of the total court system docket (but account for about 75% of civil jury trials). There is litigation other than debt collection, eviction and personal injury litigation. But in some of those kinds of cases, like probates and divorces and bankruptcies, where determining who is the winner and who is not is even more challenging. Indeed, in many such cases that are actively litigated, everyone ends up losing and no one ends up winning. In the law and economics literature, the classic study (Leeson 2011) looked at who won disputed land title disputed in medieval England in the days of trial by combat. It turns out that back then, the wealthier party, who could afford to hire better champions in a trial by combat, usually won. The question asked feels like it is trying to build on that model and determine if that kind of law and economics finding can be applied to modern day litigation with the controlling factor being who hires the best lawyers to go to trial for them, rather than who hires the best champion in trials by combat. Many cynical people think that this is how the legal system works now. But overwhelmingly, at the threshold of who gets any relief relative to the status quo from a court in litigation, the answer is almost always the person who brings the lawsuit, 95%+ of the time, either in a settlement, or at trial, and whether the person bringing the lawsuit is usually more affluent or less affluent than the defendant is dominantly a function of what basis for the lawsuit, while whether the parties have lawyers, and if so, how good they are, are only second or third order considerations. None of this is to say that hiring good lawyers, who, on average, are more expensive than mediocre lawyers, doesn't improve one's outcomes at the margins, or that affluent people are more able and willing, on average, to hire good lawyers than less affluent people. But, to see the difference, you need to think about relative degrees of winning or losing, and you need to recognize that the nature of the lawsuit matters. Along the same lines, studies comparing people who have private criminal defense counsel (because they can afford to do so) with people who have public defenders (who are by definition indigent defendants), usually show that the outcomes at the guilt-innocence phase are very similar between the two, although public defendants pay much less attention to their clients and provide much less &quot;customer service&quot;. The divide in those cases is not mostly on guilt-innocence outcomes, but in the ability of affluent defendants with expensive criminal defense lawyers to have more satisfying lawyer-client relationships and experiences, and to take better advantage of alternative sentencing options, rather than just getting thrown in jail or prison. To some extent, this is a long winded way of saying that the research you are looking for, in the plainest terms as stated in the question, doesn't really exist. This is, in part, because in many contexts at a shallow level, it is obvious, and in part, because, viewed more deeply, it is extremely subtle and requires very rich data to discern which makes it hard to gather and hard to compare.