An abuse of process is the unjustified or unreasonable use of legal proceedings to pursue a cause of action, arising when a party claims that an opponent is misusing or perverting a properly issued civil or criminal court process for a purpose the underlying legal action does not justify. In common law systems, abuse of process is a tort distinct from malicious prosecution, addressing the misuse of the public's access to the courts. Most common law jurisdictions require showing both an ulterior purpose behind the use of the process and an improper act in employing that process beyond what regular proceedings call for to establish it, and unlike malicious prosecution, abuse of process generally does not require proof of malice, lack of probable cause, or a favorable outcome in the underlying case. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Core PrincipleLegal proceedings may not be used for an ulterior purpose, through an act improper in the regular conduct of the proceedings. 2 Classification
Doctrine Category Connections
In Area Of Law
Entity-backed identity for the doctrine category value this doctrine already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a doctrine entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
In Legal System
Source Abuse of process (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Abuse of process
the unjustified or unreasonable use of legal proceedings; classified as a tort distinct from the intentional tort of malicious prosecutionView the Source 2. Abuse of process (Wikipedia)
Lead paragraph
An abuse of process is the unjustified or unreasonable use of legal proceedings or process to further a cause of action by an applicant or plaintiff in an action.
In Legal System: Common Law, Introduction
In common law it is classified as a tort distinct from the intentional tort of malicious prosecution.
View the SourceReader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.