Commencing an Action

A civil action is commenced by filing a complaint with the court. (As revised and reissued May 1, 2002; as amended Nov. 3, 2008.) Rules Committee Notes 2002 Revision In the interest of achieving greater uniformity with the corresponding FRCP, a number of changes have been made to RCFC 3. First, former subdivision (a) was fully conformed to the FRCP; the reference to RCFC 40.2 calls attention to this court’s “related case” rule. Second, former (b), which addressed disputes subdivision regarding filing dates, was deleted—both in the interest of uniformity and in the belief that it was inappropriate to include a rule of decision as part of a procedural rule. Third, former subdivision (c) (prescribing a cover sheet and identifying the number of copies required for filing) was moved to RCFC 5.3(d). 2008 Amendment The caption of RCFC 3 has been amended to conform to the general restyling of the FRCP. In addition, the parenthetical reference to RCFC 40.2(a) (“Related Cases”) that was included in the former version of RCFC 3 has been deleted as unnecessary.