There’s been a lot of publicity about North Carolina Senate candidate Kay Hagan’s "lawsuit" against incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole over a television commercial suggesting that Hagan is "godless."
The subject of this post is that there technically isn’t a lawsuit at all, at least not yet. The court filing by Hagan illustrates an interesting quirk of North Carolina civil procedure. In North Carolina, you can start a legal proceeding without filing the Complaint which typically begins a lawsuit.
That’s pretty unusual. I’m not aware of any other state which has a procedure exactly like the one contained in Rule 3 of the North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure, which lets a lawyer file a Summons to start a lawsuit and to then follow up twenty days later with a Complaint detailing the claims against the defendant. (Though North Dakota Rules of Civil Procedure 3 and 4(c) provide that you can start a lawsuit with a Summons and the Defendant can then demand that the Complaint be filed within twenty days).
The North Carolina procedure is colloquially called a "Summons without Complaint." Our Rule 3 provides that while a lawsuit is ordinarily started with the filing of a Complaint:
A civil action may also be commenced by the issuance of a summons when
(1) A person makes application to the court stating the nature and purpose of his action and requesting permission to file his complaint within 20 days and
(2) The court makes an order stating the nature and purpose of the action and granting the requested permission.
Why would a lawyer use this procedure? One reason might be to toll the statute of limitations, which obviously wasn’t necessary given the very recent airing of the commercial, or to try to be first to the courthouse when there is a dispute over where a particular claim should be litigated, also not a particularly significant factor in the dispute between the candidates.
There is a North Carolina form for a lawsuit started without a Complaint, which is exactly what Hagan filed to initiate her claim against Senator Dole. The filing lays out the basis for the lawsuit, probably in more detail than Rule 3 requires, because the Rule requires only "preliminary notice" of the nature of the claim. See, e.g., Morris v. Dickson, 14 N.C. App. 122, 187 S.E.2d 409 (1972). Continue Reading North Carolina Senate Campaign Lawsuit (Hagan v. Dole) Started By Summons Without Complaint
The North Carolina Business Court decided today the first published opinion under North Carolina’s Identity Theft Protection Act, N.C. Gen. Stat. §75-60 et seq. The case, Fisher v. Communications Workers of America, also involves an interesting invasion of privacy
The Defendant’s exercise of his Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination was the basis for the North Carolina Business Court’s entry of a Preliminary Injunction on October 29th in 
You’ve lost a case in the North Carolina Court of Appeals, It was unanimous, 3-0. You are talking with your client about a Petition for Discretionary Review to the North Carolina Supreme Court. 
The North Carolina litigation involving Citigroup and Wells Fargo’s fight for Wachovia has been dismissed with the consent of the parties. As a part of the dismissal, Citigroup has agreed that it will not take any steps to enjoin a merger between Wells Fargo and Wachovia or interfere with a vote of the Wachovia shareholders