Study guide
This closing chapter pairs Civil Procedure, tested under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the jurisdiction and venue provisions of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, with Real Property, tested largely under common-law and majority real-property doctrine. Roughly two-thirds of Civil Procedure questions concern jurisdiction and venue, pretrial procedure, or motions, while Real Property questions are spread evenly across five major topic areas.
Subject-Matter Jurisdiction, Personal Jurisdiction, and Venue
A federal court needs subject-matter jurisdiction over the case and personal jurisdiction over the defendant. Federal question jurisdiction exists when the plaintiff's well-pleaded complaint asserts a claim arising under federal law. Diversity jurisdiction requires complete diversity, meaning no plaintiff shares state citizenship with any defendant, and an amount in controversy exceeding 75,000 dollars, determined largely by the good-faith allegations in the complaint. A corporation is a citizen of both its state of incorporation and the state of its principal place of business; an unincorporated entity such as a partnership takes the citizenship of all its members. Supplemental jurisdiction lets a federal court hear related state-law claims that form part of the same case or controversy as a claim within its original jurisdiction, though a court may decline it in certain circumstances, such as when the state claim raises a novel issue or predominates. A defendant may remove a case from state court to federal court if the federal court would have had original jurisdiction, though a case based solely on diversity jurisdiction cannot be removed if any properly joined and served defendant is a citizen of the forum state. Personal jurisdiction requires sufficient minimum contacts with the forum state such that jurisdiction does not offend fair play and substantial justice; specific jurisdiction arises when the claim relates to the defendant's forum contacts, while general jurisdiction exists over a defendant essentially at home in the forum. Venue is proper in a district where any defendant resides if all defendants reside in the same state, or where a substantial part of the events giving rise to the claim occurred. Example: A citizen of Ohio sues a citizen of Kentucky for 100,000 dollars in negligence arising from a car accident in Kentucky; diversity jurisdiction is satisfied, and venue is proper in the Kentucky district where the accident occurred.
Pleadings, Joinder, and Discovery
Federal pleading requires a short and plain statement of the claim showing the pleader is entitled to relief, and under prevailing Supreme Court precedent, the claim must be facially plausible, not merely conceivable, meaning the factual allegations must allow a reasonable inference of liability. A defendant must generally raise personal jurisdiction, venue, insufficient process, and insufficient service of process defenses in the first Rule 12 motion or responsive pleading, or they are waived; failure to state a claim, failure to join a required party, and lack of subject-matter jurisdiction can be raised later, and the latter can be raised at any time, even on appeal. Joinder rules let a plaintiff join multiple claims against a defendant, and let multiple parties join as plaintiffs or defendants when their claims arise from the same transaction or occurrence and share a common question. A required party under Rule 19 must be joined if feasible when complete relief cannot be given without them or their absence would impair their own interests or expose a party to multiple obligations; if joinder is not feasible, the court decides whether to proceed or must dismiss. Class actions require numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy of representation, plus one of the additional Rule 23(b) categories, most often that common questions predominate and a class action is the superior method of adjudication. Discovery permits parties to obtain any nonprivileged matter relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, encompassing depositions, interrogatories, requests for production, and requests for admission, subject to work-product protection for trial-preparation materials, discoverable only on a showing of substantial need and undue hardship. Example: A plaintiff sues one of two joint tortfeasors for a car accident; because complete relief can still be granted against the sued defendant alone, the absent tortfeasor is not automatically a required party under Rule 19, though the plaintiff may choose to join them.
Pretrial and Post-Trial Motions, Preclusion, and Appeal
A motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim tests only the legal sufficiency of the pleadings, taking all well-pleaded factual allegations as true. Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine dispute of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, based on the pleadings, discovery materials, and affidavits; the nonmoving party must come forward with specific facts showing a genuine issue for trial once the moving party has met its initial burden. A motion for judgment as a matter of law may be made during trial once a party has been fully heard on an issue and no reasonable jury could find for that party, and if denied, may be renewed after an adverse verdict. Rule 11 requires that pleadings and motions be well-grounded in fact and law and not filed for an improper purpose, backed by sanctions for violations. Claim preclusion, historically called res judicata, bars relitigation of claims that were or could have been raised in a prior action between the same parties that ended in a valid final judgment on the merits. Issue preclusion, or collateral estoppel, bars relitigating an issue actually litigated and essential to a valid final judgment in a prior action, and, under modern nonmutual rules, can sometimes be invoked by a party who was a stranger to the first suit. The final judgment rule generally allows appeal only after a final decision resolving the entire case, though limited exceptions permit interlocutory appeal of certain orders, such as those granting or denying injunctions. Example: After a jury finds Landlord not negligent in a slip-and-fall suit brought by Tenant, a different tenant injured in a similar fall on the same property generally cannot use that finding offensively against Landlord if it would be unfair, but many jurisdictions permit nonmutual offensive issue preclusion when the first litigant had a full and fair opportunity to litigate.
Estates, Future Interests, and Landlord-Tenant Law
The present estates in land, in order of duration, are the fee simple absolute, of potentially infinite duration and freely transferable; the defeasible fees, including the fee simple determinable, which ends automatically on a stated event and leaves a possibility of reverter in the grantor, the fee simple subject to a condition subsequent, ending only if the grantor exercises a power of termination, and the fee simple subject to an executory limitation, which passes automatically to a third party; and the life estate, lasting for a life and requiring the life tenant to avoid waste that unreasonably impairs the property's value for future-interest holders. Future interests retained by a grantor include the reversion, possibility of reverter, and power of termination; interests created in a third party include remainders, vested or contingent, and executory interests. The rule against perpetuities voids any interest that might not vest or fail within twenty-one years after the death of a relevant life in being at creation, though many states have modified or abolished it by statute. Concurrent ownership includes tenancy in common, where each cotenant holds an undivided, freely transferable share with no survivorship right, and joint tenancy, which includes survivorship, requires unity of time, title, interest, and possession, and is severed by any cotenant's unilateral transfer. Landlord-tenant law recognizes the tenancy for years, the periodic tenancy, the tenancy at will, and the tenancy at sufferance for a holdover tenant. Every residential lease carries an implied warranty of habitability and an implied covenant of quiet enjoyment, breached by actual or constructive eviction. Example: A grandmother deeds land to her son for life, then to her granddaughter; the granddaughter holds a vested remainder, and the grandmother retains no reversion.
Easements, Mortgages, and Recording Acts
An easement is a nonpossessory right to use another's land for a specific purpose. Easements can be created expressly by grant or reservation in a deed, impliedly from prior use when a single owner's parcel is severed and the use was apparent, continuous, and reasonably necessary, by necessity when severance leaves a parcel landlocked, or by prescription through open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use for the statutory period, mirroring adverse possession. An easement appurtenant benefits a dominant estate and burdens a servient estate, passing automatically with transfers of either parcel; an easement in gross benefits a person or entity rather than land. Mortgages and other security devices, including deeds of trust and installment land contracts used as security, secure repayment of a debt with an interest in real property. Upon default, the lender may foreclose, typically through judicial sale; liens junior to the foreclosed mortgage are extinguished while senior liens survive. If sale proceeds are insufficient, the lender may seek a deficiency judgment in many jurisdictions, and any surplus goes to the mortgagor or junior lienholders. A purchaser who assumes an existing mortgage becomes personally liable on the debt, while one who takes subject to the mortgage risks only the property itself. Recording acts determine priority among competing claimants to the same property. Under a race statute, the first to record wins regardless of notice; under a notice statute, a subsequent bona fide purchaser without notice of a prior unrecorded interest prevails even without recording first; under a race-notice statute, that purchaser prevails only if they also recorded first. A properly recorded instrument gives constructive notice to later purchasers, but a wild deed, recorded outside the regular chain of title, generally does not. Example: Owner sells Blackacre to Buyer One, who does not record; Owner then sells the same parcel to Buyer Two, who pays value, has no knowledge of the first sale, and records immediately. Under a notice statute, Buyer Two prevails over Buyer One even without recording first.
Key terms
- Diversity jurisdiction
- — Federal subject-matter jurisdiction requiring complete diversity of citizenship between all plaintiffs and defendants and an amount in controversy over $75,000.
- Minimum contacts
- — The due process standard requiring a defendant have sufficient purposeful connections to the forum state before a court may exercise personal jurisdiction.
- Rule 12 defenses
- — Pretrial motions including failure to state a claim, lack of jurisdiction, and improper venue, some of which are waived if not raised in the first response.
- Summary judgment
- — A pretrial judgment granted when there is no genuine dispute of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
- Claim preclusion (res judicata)
- — The doctrine barring relitigation of claims that were or could have been raised in a prior suit between the same parties ending in a final judgment.
- Issue preclusion (collateral estoppel)
- — The doctrine barring relitigation of an issue actually litigated and essential to a prior valid final judgment.
- Fee simple determinable
- — A defeasible fee that ends automatically upon a stated event, leaving the grantor a possibility of reverter.
- Joint tenancy
- — Concurrent ownership with a right of survivorship, requiring unity of time, title, interest, and possession, severable by unilateral transfer.
- Rule against perpetuities
- — The common-law rule voiding any interest that might vest more than 21 years after the death of a relevant life in being at its creation.
- Easement by necessity
- — An easement implied when the severance of commonly owned land leaves one parcel with no access, such as being landlocked.
- Bona fide purchaser
- — One who purchases property for value and without notice of a prior competing claim, a status central to recording act priority disputes.
- Notice statute
- — A recording act under which a subsequent bona fide purchaser without notice of a prior unrecorded interest prevails, even without recording first.
Exam tips
- On jurisdiction questions, check subject-matter jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, and venue as three separate requirements; a fact pattern can satisfy one and still fail another.
- Memorize which Rule 12 defenses are waived if omitted from the first response (personal jurisdiction, venue, process, service of process) versus those that are not (failure to state a claim, subject-matter jurisdiction, failure to join a required party).
- For future interests questions, first classify the present estate, then determine what interest, if any, remains in the grantor versus what was conveyed to a third party.
- On recording act questions, identify the statute type first (race, notice, or race-notice) and then apply its specific test; do not assume the first purchaser to record automatically wins under every type.
- For mortgage priority and foreclosure questions, remember that foreclosure wipes out junior interests but not senior ones, and track whether the buyer assumed the mortgage or took subject to it.