Rule 2. One form of action

One form of action. There shall be one form of action to be known as “civil action.”

(dc) District court rule. Rule 2 applies in the district courts, subject to the limitations upon equitable jurisdiction as set forth in § 12-12-30, Code of Alabama 1975. [Amended effective 10-1-95.]

Committee Notes

Committee Comments on 1973 Adoption This rule follows in substance the usual introductory statements to code practices which provide for a single action and mode of procedure, with abolition of forms of action and procedural distinctions, and with merger of law and equity. See, e.g., N.Y.Laws 1848, ch. 379, § 62. This rule does not affect the various remedies which have heretofore been available. Instead the merger of law and equity and the abolition of the forms of action supply one uniform procedure by which a litigant may present his claim in an orderly manner to a court empowered to give him whatever relief is appropriate and just; it remains for the court to decide, in accordance with unchanged principles of substantive law, what form of relief meets this test on the particular facts proved. The court is not limited in choosing a remedy by the demand for relief in the complaint, except where the defendant is in default. Rule 54(c). The one procedural difference among actions which remains under these rules is the right to jury trial. That right is expressly preserved by Rule 38(a), and cases which would have been tried to a jury under the former procedure will still be tried to a jury if there is a timely demand for this mode of trial. In every other respect, actions are to be governed by a single procedure, regardless of whether they would historically have been “legal” or “equitable” and regardless of the form of action that might heretofore have been employed. Clark, Code Pleading, 78- 127 (2d ed. 1947). For a thorough analysis of this area, see Donaldson and Walls, Merger of Law and Equity in Alabama-Some Considerations, 33 Ala.Law. 134 (1972). The statutes of limitation, Code of Ala., § 6-2-1 et seq., are phrased in terms of the kind of wrong sought to be remedied and the kind of relief demanded, rather than in terms of the writ used. Thus they will be applicable to actions under these rules in accordance with the claim as proved, rather than the language