Rule 1.901 Trials and issues

A trial happens when both sides in a lawsuit disagree about something, and a judge or jury needs to look closely at that disagreement to settle it. This disagreement is called an "issue." Issues come up when one side makes a claim in their court papers and the other side pushes back against it.

There are two kinds of issues: issues of fact and issues of law. An issue of fact happens when one side states something happened a certain way, and the other side denies it. For example, if one person claims a car ran a red light and the other person denies it, that's an issue of fact that needs evidence to sort out.

An issue of law is different. It's a question about how the law applies, not about what actually happened. These questions get decided by the judge, not a jury. Under this rule, issues of law must be handled first, before the case moves on to figuring out the facts. This makes sense because sometimes a legal question can settle part of the case, or even the whole case, without needing to dig into the factual disputes at all.