CIVIL ACTION
A lawsuit brought to enforce, redress, or protect
rights of private litigants – the plaintiffs and the
defendants – not a criminal proceeding.
Today, courts in the United States generally
are not divided into common-law courts and
EQUITY courts because most states and the fed-
eral government have merged the procedures for
law and equity into one system. Now all kinds of
lawsuits are simply called civil actions without
the former distinctions of procedure in law or in
equity.
A criminal proceeding is called a penal action to distinguish it from civil actions.
