Computer-Aided Exercises in Civil Procedure

About this book

Roger C. Park and Douglas D. McFarland organize civil procedure around eleven exercises combining legal explanation, written work, cases, and associated computer-assisted lessons. This guide follows the linked seventh-edition PDF rather than inventing conventional chapters. The exercises move from reading precedent and choosing a court through pleadings, discovery, adjudication, and preclusion. Their procedural materials belong to the source edition, and availability of a particular online lesson is separate from access to the downloadable book.

Chapter and section guide

Exercise 1. Holding and Dicta in a Diversity Case

The opening exercise teaches readers to extract a usable rule from an opinion. A holding connects the court’s legal reasoning with facts and an issue necessary to the decision; dictum is not made binding simply by appearing in an authoritative opinion. The exercise also shows that a case can support more than one appropriately framed holding. The task is not to find a memorable sentence but to state a rule at a useful level of generality. Written formulations and the computer exercise let students compare what their wording includes and excludes.

Study application: Write a narrow and a broader statement of the same case’s holding. Explain which factual and procedural features each preserves and whether either formulation reaches beyond what the court needed to decide.

Exercise 2. Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction is divided into questions that students often collapse: subject-matter authority, personal jurisdiction, notice, and venue. The discussion examines federal-question and diversity jurisdiction, removal, and related doctrines while connecting the choice of court with the parties and claims. A court’s competence over a category of case does not itself establish power over a particular defendant. The exercise’s multiple fact patterns encourage systematic comparison. Readers should state a separate conclusion for each issue and identify what additional information is needed rather than answering only that a case belongs in federal court.

Study application: Make a jurisdiction checklist with separate columns for subject matter, personal jurisdiction, notice, and venue. Apply it to one fictional action and explain why success in one column does not resolve the others.

Exercise 3. Pleading a Complaint

Historical pleading systems prepare the federal complaint-drafting exercise. The reader sees how the form and burden of pleading developed and then connects jurisdictional allegations, the claim, and requested relief with the relevant rules. Defamation supplies a substantive setting in which procedural choices become concrete. The exercise also introduces good-faith investigation and the professional obligations associated with submitting allegations. Drafting requires more than inserting labels: facts, legal theory, and procedural requirements must be distinguished. Read the edition’s discussion alongside later authority before treating its formulations as current pleading guidance.

Study application: Draft an original short complaint outline for a fictional dispute. Mark factual allegations, legal conclusions, jurisdictional grounds, and relief separately, then identify which allegations need additional factual investigation.

Exercise 4. Demurrers and Judgments on the Pleadings

This exercise uses code-pleading devices to examine how a court tests the legal sufficiency of pleadings. The sequence of pleadings and motions matters because an objection’s function depends on what is being challenged and what material may be considered. A demurrer or judgment on the pleadings should not be confused with a trial about disputed evidence. The historical comparison helps explain later federal devices while preserving their differences. Students learn to ask whether a proposed response disputes facts, attacks a legal theory, or identifies a defect in the pleading itself.

Study application: For a fictional allegation, write one response disputing its truth and another challenging its legal sufficiency. Explain why those responses raise different procedural questions even when they address the same sentence.

Exercise 5. Rule 12 Motions and Waiver

Rule 12 is studied as a sequence of choices rather than a menu of interchangeable objections. Some defenses can be lost through omission or timing, while others are treated differently. The written and computer exercises require attention to what the defendant has already filed and which objection is proposed next. The important skill is identifying the procedural history before selecting a rule. Students should avoid memorizing a general slogan that every defense can always be raised later or that every omitted defense disappears. Exact contemporary requirements need the current rule and applicable decisions.

Study application: Create a timeline of an initial response and a proposed later motion. Identify each defense separately and research its preservation rule, making clear which conclusion follows from the edition and which needs updating.

Exercise 6. Joinder and Supplemental Jurisdiction

The sixth exercise connects devices for combining claims or parties with the court’s authority to hear the resulting action. Permissive joinder, required parties, intervention, counterclaims, and other devices do not perform identical functions. More importantly, a procedural rule allowing joinder does not necessarily supply subject-matter jurisdiction. The discussion of supplemental jurisdiction adds another layer to the analysis. A disciplined answer first identifies the joinder mechanism, then examines its conditions, and separately evaluates jurisdiction. Diagrams are useful because the direction of a claim and the identity of its parties can change the relevant questions.

Study application: Draw a claim-and-party diagram using arrows. For each proposed arrow, name the joinder device and a separate potential basis of jurisdiction. Explain why the diagram prevents an unsupported assumption that one successful claim brings every other claim into court.

Exercise 7. Discovery

Discovery is presented as a set of tools for obtaining information within a regulated litigation process. The student must choose an appropriate device, identify who holds the information, and consider the limits on obtaining it. A request’s usefulness does not alone establish its propriety, and discoverability is not identical to admissibility at trial. The exercise develops judgment about scope, objections, and the relationship between information and a claim or defense. Procedural standards and proportionality requirements can change, so the historical exercise should be paired with current authority for contemporary research.

Study application: Prepare three information needs for a fictional case and choose an appropriate discovery device for each. Explain the expected relevance, possible objection, and alternative route without assuming that every useful document must be produced.

Exercise 8. Summary Judgment

Summary judgment concerns whether the record permits a trial-worthy factual dispute under the applicable legal framework. It is different from assessing whether a complaint states a claim. The exercise asks students to connect an evidentiary record with the elements and burdens that matter to the dispute. A party’s assertion is not automatically sufficient support, while a disagreement over an immaterial detail does not necessarily require trial. The analytical task is to identify the material issue, the available evidence, and the role assigned to the court at this stage.

Study application: Create a table matching each substantive element with evidence supporting and opposing it. Mark the genuinely disputed material facts and explain why a credibility determination should not be smuggled into a summary-judgment conclusion.

Exercise 9. Judgment as a Matter of Law

The trial-stage exercise extends the distinction between legal sufficiency and factfinding. Timing matters because a motion made during or after trial operates within a different record and procedural sequence from summary judgment. Students should identify the evidence considered and the standard governing whether a reasonable factfinder could reach the relevant conclusion. A judge’s personal preference for one account is not the same as a legally insufficient evidentiary basis. The exercise also emphasizes preservation and the relationship among trial motions and later review.

Study application: Compare the same hypothetical issue at pleading, summary judgment, and trial. State the material the court may consider at each stage and explain why a conclusion valid at one stage may not follow at another.

Exercise 10. Evidence for Civil Procedure Students

The evidence exercise supplies concepts needed to reason about litigation records without turning the book into a complete evidence course. Students learn that obtaining information, offering it, and using it for a particular purpose are separate questions. A document may require attention to authentication, hearsay, and the proposition for which it is offered. This material supports the earlier adjudication exercises because a record’s legal significance depends on more than its volume. The practical goal is to explain how an item could support a material issue and what obstacle remains.

Study application: Choose a fictional document and state its proposed use in the case. Separate relevance, authentication, and any hearsay question, then explain how a change in the offered purpose could change the analysis.

Exercise 11. Preclusion

The final exercise asks when an earlier proceeding limits later litigation. Claim preclusion and issue preclusion address different forms of repetition and should be analyzed independently. The identity of parties, the earlier judgment, the matter resolved, and the opportunity to litigate become important facts. Saying that a dispute has already been in court is not a complete argument. Students should reconstruct the earlier procedural outcome before deciding what it prevents. This closes the book’s progression by showing that procedural choices and judgments can have effects beyond the action in which they occurred.

Study application: Draw a timeline of two fictional lawsuits. Identify the claim in each, any issue actually resolved in the first, and the judgment entered. Explain separately the potential claim-preclusion and issue-preclusion arguments.

Study instructions

1. Read the explanatory material before attempting the corresponding written and computer-assisted exercise.
2. Maintain separate diagrams for parties and claims, procedural chronology, and court authority.
3. Brief a case by facts, procedural posture, issue, reasoning, and holding before evaluating its result.
4. Attempt exercises independently and explain why an alternative answer fails rather than recording only a choice.
5. Check current procedural authority and lesson access separately; the PDF’s availability does not guarantee access to every linked interactive resource.

Practice and review task

Build a procedural dossier for one fictional action: jurisdiction map, complaint outline, response timeline, discovery plan, dispositive-motion comparison, and a possible later preclusion issue. Use distinct headings so one stage’s assumptions are not silently carried into another.

Questions for reflection

Why can a permitted joinder still fail jurisdictionally? How does the material available to a court change between testing a complaint and evaluating a trial record?

Sources and coverage

This original study guide follows Seventh edition, linked December 2014 PDF. It draws on the source contents, chapter introductions, selected explanations and examples, and review material. It condenses the resource rather than replacing the full text; study applications are original exercises. This guide covers the eleven exercises in the downloaded edition, not the operation or completion of every associated CALI lesson. Procedural discussion is educational and historical.

Reviewed source text; Book and cover catalog record.