This summary is not the rule. The rule text controls.
Courts used to have different types of lawsuits with different names and different rules, depending on what kind of legal problem you had. Some were called "actions at law" and others were called "suits in equity," and each type came with its own set of procedures you had to follow correctly or risk losing your case on a technicality.
This rule gets rid of all those old categories. Now there is just one type of case, called a "civil action." It does not matter if you are suing someone for money, asking a court to stop someone from doing something, or seeking some other type of legal relief. All these claims go through the same basic process.
For someone involved in a lawsuit, this means you do not have to worry about picking the "right" old-fashioned label for your case or following different rules based on what kind of claim you have. One consistent set of procedures applies to civil cases in district court, which makes the process simpler and less likely to trip people up over technical naming issues.
