Business, Legal & Accounting Glossary
Giving sufficient reason to take legal action.
adj. when enough facts or circumstances exist to meet the legal requirements to file a legitimate lawsuit. If the facts required to prove a case cannot be alleged in the complaint, the case is not “actionable” and the client and his/her attorney should not file a suit. Of course, whether many cases are actionable is a matter of judgment and interpretation of the facts and/or law, resulting in many lawsuits that clog the courts. Incidentally, if a case is filed which is clearly not actionable, it may result in a lawsuit against the filer of the original suit for malicious prosecution by the defendant after he/she has won the original suit.
Giving sufficient legal grounds for a lawsuit; giving rise to a cause of action.
An act, event, or occurrence is said to be actionable when there are legal grounds for basing a lawsuit on it. For example, an assault is an actionable tort.
An act is ‘actionable’ if it is capable of being pursued as a legal action in the civil courts. Not all wrongs suffered by an individual are actionable. For example, if I were to visit your home while you were undergoing a debilitating emotional crisis, and I were to then persuade you to give me money so that I might leave, this blatant exploitation by me of your vulnerable state of mind would probably not be actionable. It would certainly be underhanded and immoral; but not every immoral act is thereby ‘actionable’.
Generally speaking, there is some vague correspondence between the terms ‘actionable’ and ‘unlawful’.
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This glossary post was last updated: 8th October, 2021 | 0 Views.