Tip #39 - How to 'Remove' a party from a case

Occasionally, it may be necessary to ‘remove’ a party from a case – whether it may be plaintiff or defendant. For example, you may have commenced an action against several defendants, but the litigation (for whatever reason) is only proceeding against one or more defendant(s) but not against all who were initially named. Rather than deleting the defendant (in which case there may be no indication that the ‘deleted’ defendant was originally named), you may want to ‘remove’ the defendant from the case instead. A party that has been ‘removed’ from the case will still show on the respective Plaintiff or Defendant Summary Screen, but the name will be displayed with strike through marks. The name will not be displayed on the Case Summary Screen, however.

Below is an example of the portion of a Summary Screen of a case with multiple Plaintiffs (three) and Multiple Defendants (two).

To remove the third Plaintiff, for example, we would navigate to the Plaintiff Summary Screen, edit the plaintiff we want to remove and then check the ‘Remove From Case’ checkbox.

The resulting Plaintiff Summary Screen in this example will still display all original plaintiffs, but now the ‘Removed’ plaintiff’s name will have strike throughs.

Another example with a defendant removed

Now the removed parties will not be displayed on the main Case Summary Screen

Case Summary Screen with three plaintiffs and two defendants displayed

Case Summary Screen after one plaintiff and one defendant have been removed

To ‘return’ a removed party to the case, simply edit that party on the respective Plaintiff or Defendant Summary Screen and uncheck the ‘Remove From Case’ checkbox.