Lessons · Law foundations · civil cases and criminal cases
Two kinds of case, and the four questions that tell them apart
A civil case is one party asking a court to make another put something right; a criminal case is the state asking a court to punish somebody for breaking a public rule.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
A caller says: I want to press charges against the company that kept my deposit. Two completely different files start from those words, and the office cannot open either one until it knows which. Who is bringing it decides the forms, the court, the deadlines and how sure the court has to be before anybody wins.
How to think about it
Ask four questions in the same order every time, and write the answers at the top of the file: who is bringing it, what is the thing called, what is at stake, and how sure must the court be.
Worked example
Who is bringing it: a private party, or the state?This one question decides the other three. A private party brings a civil case; only the state brings a charge.
Civil: the thing brought is a claim, and what is asked for is money or an order to do or stop doing something.The court is being asked to put something right between two parties, not to punish.
Criminal: the thing brought is a charge, and what is at stake is a penalty the state imposes.A fine, supervision, or loss of liberty. The complainant does not control it; the state does.
One event can start both: a crash can produce a charge brought by the state and a separate claim brought by the injured party.They run in different courts on different timetables and can land differently. That is not a contradiction; they are different questions.
Your turn
Name what is at stake for a defendant in a criminal case, beyond a fine or supervision.
At stake in a criminal case: a fine, supervision, or
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Hearing press charges from a client and opening a civil file, or the reverse. The words people use at the door are not the words the system uses, and the first note in the file has to be the translation.