0 someone who makes a legal complaint against someone else in court --
1 a person who accuses someone else in a law case of having done something illegal --
2 a person or company that makes a legal complaint about someone else in a court of law: --
The plaintiff knew all about this car when he got into it.
The plaintiffs knew what the statutes required of school systems but had a different idea about what the law required.
Our tort law's system of imposing liability on defendants if they have tortiously injured plaintiffs is essentially a system of corrective justice.
What settlement does is to make the one-in-thirteen ex ante chance of prevailing the determining factor for all plaintiffs.
If plaintiffs lived in remote villages, they had to make overnight trips to the yamen courts in designated cities.
Relatedly, the economic model cannot explain why the defendant's liability is equivalent to the plaintiff's loss.
We do not insist that the plaintiff's loss must be the measure of the damages.
The important point is that the defendant's duty to the plaintiff persists after its breach.