Articles related to pleading

Civil lawsuits, regardless of their eventual complexity, all begin the same way: with the filing of the complaint. North Carolina Rule of Civil Procedure 8 requires that the complaint contain a “short and plain statement” of the events that form the basis of the claims for relief. G.S. 1A-1, Rule 8(a)(1). Courts and scholars have often referred to this requirement as notice pleading.

In lawsuits against units of local government, the general rule is that the trial court must throw out the plaintiff’s claims if the unit raises the defense of governmental immunity and the complaint fails to allege a waiver of that immunity.  This blog post looks at how detailed a waiver allegation must be for a complaint to survive an assertion of governmental immunity.

The Concept of Waiver

As I’ve explained in prior blog posts (here, here, and here), the defense of governmental immunity protects cities, counties, and other units of local government from civil liability for negligence and other claims – though not constitutional claims – that arise from the performance of governmental functions.  The courts have recognized that a unit may waive this immunity through any of the three actions described in the next section.  Essentially, by acting in any of those ways, a unit consents to be sued for any civil claims that fall within the scope of the waiver.

In an earlier post, I talked about some of the deficiencies in a complaint that can prevent a party from taking advantage of the statute of limitations extension in Rule […]