The plaintiff, claimant, or complainant is the party initiating a lawsuit, (also known as an action). The plaintiff is the one who is claiming damages for injury; or who is seeking redress of a wrong. In some jurisdictions the commencement of a lawsuit is done by filing a summons and/or a complaint -- these documents are known as pleadings -- that set forth the alleged wrongs committed by the defendant or defendants with a demand for relief. In other jurisdictions the action is commenced by service of legal process by delivery of these documents on the defendant by a process server; they are only filed with the court subsequently with an affidavit from the process server that they had been given to the defendant(s) according to the rules of civil procedure.
Not all lawsuits are plenary actions. There are also simplified procedures, often called proceedings, in which the parties are termed petitioner instead of plaintiff and respondent, instead of defendant. There are also cases that do not technically involve two sides; such as petitions for specific statutory relief that requires judicial approval; in those cases there are no respondents, just a petitioner.
The party to whom the complaint is against is the defendant; or in the case of a petition, a respondent.
Petitioner had placed his full faith and trust in them and had no reason to know or suspect that all of their conduct and all of their advice to him was tainted and poisoned by their undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Petitioner most certainly does assert that he was prevented from testifying during the original PCRA proceedings because he followed the advice of his prior attorneys and that (although he was unaware of this until after May 4, 2001) the reason why they blocked him from testifying was because of their conflicts of interest.
Petitioner was unaware (and could never have been aware) that Weinglass and Williams were acting in bad faith and that their failure to present his defense case was a deliberate act on their part, which stemmed from their conflict of interest, and that they were not acting in his best interests at all.
The court noted that petitioner's "sole purpose in applying its affirmative action policy * * * was to obtain an educational benefit," and that petitioner's policy was not adopted " to remedy past discrimination or as the result of a manifest imbalance in the employment of minorities." Id.
Petitioner's layoff decision therefore unnecessarily trammelled respondent's interests in violation of Title VII, and the judgment upholding the award to respondent of monetary relief should be affirmed on that ground.
Petitioner therefore failed to satisfy both the Constitution's narrow tailoring requirement and the parallel requirement in Title VII that a race-conscious employment decision may not unnecessarily trammel the interests of those affected by the decision.
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