I had to write a complaint during work one time. My lawyer was representing a young woman who was filing a complaint to her landlord. In this case, she was the Plaintiff. Her landlord was the Defendant.
The first thing we had to do is file a complaint. A complaint plainly states why the Plaintiff is filing a "Civil Summons." The complaint includes the parties involved with their addresses.
Then, it states where the issue took place and under what law or rule it goes against in that state. After this section, the general allegations are listed. These are what the Plaintiff is charging the Defendant for.
After the allegations, the course of action that had to be taken because of them are listed. The last part of the complaint is the prayer relief, where the Plaintiff states what they want the outcome to be of this complaint.
It's a simple document that is filed by the court which states what the Plaintiff is charging for, what actions they had to take because of what they're charging for, and what they think the outcomes should be. It has to be extremely detailed because you need to be precise about what you are charging the Defendant for.
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I'm interested in one particular passage from this blog post:
ReplyDelete"The first thing we had to do is file a complaint. A complaint plainly states why the Plaintiff is filing a "Civil Summons." The complaint includes the parties involved with their addresses. Then, it states where the issue took place and under what law or rule it goes against in that state. After this section, the general allegations are listed. These are what the Plaintiff is charging the Defendant for."
I'm wondering if there are rhetorical strategies for writing effective statements about "listing the general allegations." Do these lists need to be written in particular ways to be effective? Do they need to "echo" the language of a specific law? Do they need to be written in the plaintiff's own words? In legalese?