Civil Litigation-Filing Suit
Any person can walk into a courthouse and file a lawsuit. The party bringing that lawsuit is referred to as the plaintiff. The party being sued is referred to as the defendant. The initial document filed with the court to initiate a lawsuit may have different names, depending upon the jurisdiction where you are filing. Typically, the initial document filed with the court to initiate a civil claim is referred to as a complaint. In any complaint, you can ask for either legal relief or equitable relief. If the claim being pursued is a legal claim, then the damages being requested would consist of compensatory damages and perhaps punitive damages.
Compensatory damages are designed to make a person whole from the loss he or she has suffered.
Compensatory damages are damages that are designed to compensate the plaintiff for his or her injuries. To put that another way, compensatory damages are designed to make that person whole for the loss he or she has suffered as a result of the conduct of the defendant. Punitive damages, on the other hand, are designed to punish the defendant for egregious conduct. Punitive damages are rarely awarded, and normally when they are awarded they are carefully reviewed by the court to determine the appropriateness of the award.
