Also known as: private plaintiff · private litigants
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
An ordinary civil litigant who is neither a public official nor a public figure.
Priya Prasad, a local accountant, sued a newspaper after it published an article accusing her of falsifying client tax returns. The paper had relied on an unverified tip without contacting her or reviewing public records. Because she remained a private plaintiff, the court permitted recovery of actual damages upon a showing that the publisher acted negligently.
Phoebe Park, a private employer defending a discrimination suit, instructed counsel to use peremptory challenges to remove all female venire members. The trial judge supervised the selection process. The court held that the strikes violated equal protection because private litigants participate in a state function when exercising peremptories.
Philip Powell, a private investor harmed by misleading corporate disclosures, sued after the SEC had already obtained a judgment against the same defendants. The court allowed Powell to invoke the prior finding of violation because the defendants had a full opportunity to litigate the issue and applying preclusion was fair under the circumstances.
Priscilla Parks, a private defendant in a contract dispute, directed her lawyer to strike all Black prospective jurors during court-supervised voir dire. The judge enforced the strikes. The appellate court reversed, holding that the private party's racially discriminatory use of peremptories constituted state action subject to equal protection limits.
Paula Pierce, an individual consumer, sued a data broker alleging statutory violations that exposed her personal information. The court examined whether the alleged harm qualified as concrete injury sufficient for Article III standing. Because she was a private plaintiff asserting her own rights rather than generalized public grievances, the analysis focused on whether the harm was real and particularized.
Spokeo, Inc. operates a website known as a people search engine. Users can input a person's name, phone number, or email address to conduct searches across a wide variety of databases. The site provides personal information about individuals, including address, phone number, marital status, approximate age, occupation, hobbies, finances, shopping habits, and musical preferences. Thomas Robins discovered that a profile generated about him on Spokeo contained several inaccuracies. These included statements that he was married with children, in his fifties, employed, relatively affluent, and holding a graduate degree, when in fact none of this was true. Robins filed a class action complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against Spokeo. He alleged that the company willfully failed to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of consumer reports as required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The District Court dismissed the complaint, determining that Robins had not properly pleaded an injury in fact. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed that dismissal. It concluded that Robins had adequately alleged injury in fact based on the violation of his statutory rights and the individualized nature of his interests in his credit information. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case after the Ninth Circuit's decision in 2014.
View casePierre Poulin, a parent of school-age children, challenged a district policy that assigned students by race to achieve integration. The court evaluated whether the policy survived strict scrutiny. As a private plaintiff asserting individual rights, Poulin could press the claim that the classification lacked a compelling justification narrowly tailored to the asserted interest.
In the late 1990s the Seattle School District No. 1 adopted a student assignment plan for its ten regular public high schools. Incoming ninth graders ranked preferences among schools. The district applied a series of tiebreakers when schools were oversubscribed. The second tiebreaker classified students as white or nonwhite. It selected students whose race would bring an integration-positive school within ten percentage points of the district-wide balance of 41 percent white and 59 percent nonwhite. The plan affected assignments at five oversubscribed schools in the 2000-2001 school year. Petitioner Parents Involved in Community Schools filed suit in the Western District of Washington in July 2000 alleging violations of the Equal Protection Clause. Jefferson County Public Schools had been under a 1975 federal desegregation decree. The decree was dissolved in 2000 after a finding of unitary status. The district adopted a voluntary assignment plan in 2001. The plan required all nonmagnet schools to maintain black enrollment between 15 and 50 percent. The plan grouped elementary schools into clusters. It assigned kindergartners and new students within clusters according to space and racial guidelines. It denied transfer requests that would push a school outside the guidelines. Approximately 34 percent of the district's 97,000 students were black. When Crystal Meredith moved into the district in August 2002 she sought to enroll her son Joshua in kindergarten at Bloom Elementary one mile from their home. The district denied the intercluster transfer from Young Elementary because it would adversely affect desegregation compliance at Young which was then 46.8 percent black. Meredith filed suit in the Western District of Kentucky alleging an Equal Protection violation. The Seattle District Court granted summary judgment to the district in 2001. The Ninth Circuit en banc affirmed the federal constitutional ruling in 2005. The District Court found that Jefferson County had asserted a compelling interest in maintaining racially diverse schools, and that the assignment plan was in all relevant respects narrowly tailored to serve that compelling interest. The Sixth Circuit affirmed in a per curiam opinion relying upon the reasoning of the District Court. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in both cases in 2006.
View caseA private plaintiff need only prove negligence. Actual malice is not required for compensatory damages, although it remains necessary for presumed or punitive damages.
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Yes, provided the application is fair to the defendant. The prior litigation must have given the defendant a full and fair opportunity to contest the issue, and the circumstances must not render preclusion inequitable.
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Yes. Jury selection is a traditional governmental function performed with significant court participation, so racially or gender-based strikes by private parties violate equal protection.
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No. The plaintiff must still demonstrate a concrete and particularized injury in fact. A bare procedural violation without real harm is insufficient even when Congress created the cause of action.
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…of state concern than public persons with more access to the media to defend themselves. It therefore refuses to condition the private plaintiff's recovery on a showing of intentional or reckless falsehood as required by New York Times . But the Court nevertheless extends the reach of the First Amendment to all defamation actions…