Civilian
Filing a judicial case
The JUDICIAL tab - your cases, the notices the judicial desk sends you, entering or changing a plea, and filing a civil case against another character or a department.
Your community can run a judicial system, and JUDICIAL is your side of it. It is roleplay - an invented system for an invented town.
The tab carries a number when the judicial desk has sent you something you have not read.
Judicial notices
Summonses, hearing dates, reschedules and outcomes appear at the top. An unread notice is highlighted; MARK ALL READ clears them. Nothing is deleted - the case itself is the record.
If a hearing moves, the notice shows the new time and the reason the judicial desk gave.
My cases
Every case involving any of your characters, whether you filed it or somebody filed it against you. Each card shows the docket number, where the case has got to, the next hearing if one is listed, your plea if you have entered one, and the outcome once there is one.
Entering a plea
If one of your characters is the defendant on a criminal case, the card carries a plea control: guilty, not guilty or no contest.
- Enter it before the hearing. The judicial desk is told as soon as you do.
- You can change it while the case is still open. Every version is kept and the judicial desk can see the history.
- Pleas close once the case has been heard.
A plea can be entered only on your own character's case.
Filing a civil case
FILE A CIVIL CASE brings a matter to the judicial desk yourself. You need:
- which of your characters is filing - a case is filed by a character, not by an account;
- one respondent - either another character or one of your community's departments, not both;
- what the case is about, in a few words;
- what happened, in your own words;
- what you are asking for - an amount, an order, an apology.
Filing puts the case straight onto the docket. The judicial desk is told at once, and every update after that - a hearing, a decision - reaches you here.
Each character may have up to five open cases at a time. Wait for one to finish before filing another.
What you cannot do
- File as somebody else's character.
- File against a character or department in a different community.
- Have a character sue itself.
- Touch another player's case, or another community's docket, in any way.
Who else sees it
A case is a public record inside your community: the judicial desk sees the docket, and officers involved in the case are told when it is scheduled or decided. A conviction is added to your character's records index, so an officer running the name will see it. An acquittal or a dismissal is not.
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