Permits have become a catch-all term across development projects where almost every detail or change needs to run through various approval processes to obtain the proper permits to finish a project. It seems tedious to obtain these approvals while trying to manage the...
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Legal Issues & Procedures
4 THOUGHTS ON ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY
In my last case with the State of Oregon, several counties sued the state for over a billion dollars. They alleged that the state had breached a contract with them for high timber harvests and therefore higher timber generated payments. The issues in the case went all...
BEGINNING DISCOVERY
This post assumes a typical large commercial or government lawsuit in federal court where the complaint or some version of it has survived motion practice. The next step in the litigation is discovery. Here, I will explore what discovery is and what it means to the...
TRIAL COURT PROCEDURE
When I started law school I was required to buy a lot of books. Two of them were books titled Civil Procedure and something like West’s Court Rules. The Civil Procedure book was a case book, and the Court Rules was a compendium of rules. I was also given a reading...
STARTING THE STORY
We have seen that litigation is best practiced as the art of telling stories. This post explores how that process begins, because the start of litigation can be very formal. The trick is to get the story of the plaintiff or defendant through the formality that begins...
IT ALL STARTS WITH STORIES
People understand, remember, and take action based more on stories than abstract theories. A lawyer can argue the plaintiff’s case is res ipsa loquitur that the blade damaged the plaintiff. Or the lawyer can argue, the spinning blade in defendant’s machine suddenly...
INTRODUCTION TO CIVIL LITIGATION
Do not ever believe that litigation will be easy. This holds true no matter how good your case or just the cause. However good your case, the lawyers on the other side will find every blemish, every mistake and will develop a model of the facts and law in which you...