11. I am the defendant of a civil action but I believe another party should be responsible for the plaintiff’s claim instead. What should I do?
If you are a defendant in a civil action and you consider that another person should bear responsibility for the plaintiff’s claim, you may be able to make a claim against that person within the same proceedings. To initiate either of the procedures below, you must first have given notice of intention to defend the action. The appropriate procedure depends on whether that person is already a party to the action.
The main purpose of these procedures is to avoid unnecessary separate lawsuits. They allow the court to deal with related disputes at the same time and reduce the risk of the same issue being tried twice with different results.
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