§ Introductory Note to the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure
Introductory Note to the Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure
One of the primary objectives in the drafting and adoption of the following Superior Court Rules of Civil Procedure has been to provide an integral and convenient rules structure modeled closely on that of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Thus, the practitioner should understand that these Civil Rules are of three kinds:
(1) Rules 1-86 hereof are derived directly from the correspondingly numbered Federal Rules and are in many cases identical thereto.
(2) Rules bearing an Arabic Number from 1 to 86 followed by a Roman Numeral contain additional Superior Court provisions dealing with the same subject matter as the Federal Rule to which they are appended. For example, Rule 16 is the general Pre-Trial rule virtually identical to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16, while Rule 16-I states the specific manner in which pre-trial proceedings shall be conducted in this Court. Similarly, Rule 23 is identical to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 which governs Class Actions, while Rules 23-I and 23-II set out two further provisions on that subject. Should the Court adopt other rules with respect to Class Actions, they will be designated Rules 23-III, 23-IV, and so on.
(3) Rules bearing an Arabic Number above 100 are purely local rules as to which the Federal Rules have no parallel provisions. They have been placed at the end of the federally-derived rules under three headings and assigned consecutive numbers beginning at 101, 201, and 301, respectively. (Rule Numbers 87-100 are reserved for possible later rules based on subsequently promulgated additions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.)
In order to identify the instances in which the federally-derived Superior Court Rules (Rules 1-86) depart in any respect from their Federal Rule counterparts, there appears after each such rule (and any Roman Numeral rules appended thereto) a Comment either indicating that the Superior Court Rule is identical to the Federal Rule or specifying the principal departures therefrom. In some cases, brief comments are also made with respect to certain of the Roman numeral addenda rules and the “purely local” rules above 100. The Comments are those of the Advisory Committee, not the Court. They are not part of the Rules and are in no way binding on court decisions applying the Rules. They are the considered views of lawyers and judges who helped draft the Rules and are published for whatever instructive value they may provide to members of the Bar and others.
Throughout the rules and comments, appropriate sections of the District of Columbia Code, as amended by the District of Columbia Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970, have generally been cited as D.C.Code (1967 edition, supplement IV) § _______. In the event such supplement is unavailable to the reader, the same sections may be found in the text of the Court Reform Act, Public Law 91-358 (84 Stat. 473).
The Board of Judges of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia
February 1, 1971