Summary. This checklist turns the remedies law of trade secret litigation into concrete tasks, ordered the way a case actually unfolds, so that neither the owner of a secret nor the accused party loses money or leverage through a missed step. It starts with intake and governing-law choices, then covers pleading and disclosure of every damages theory, emergency relief including the DTSA's employment proviso and civil seizure, and the discovery that damages experts need. The core of the checklist builds and tests each measure of recovery: actual loss, unjust enrichment from profits and avoided development costs, reasonable royalties, the head start period, apportionment, and the rules against double recovery. Later parts address expert challenges under Rule 702, the defenses that shrink awards, jury instructions and verdict forms, exemplary damages, fees, interest, permanent injunctions, post-trial motions, parallel criminal restitution, and settlement terms. Each item cites the statute, rule, or decision that drives it, and notes flag where the owner's and the accused party's tasks differ. It closes with common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways.

A jury finds that a departing engineer took the process recipe and that his new employer used it. Two years later the court of appeals affirms liability and wipes out the damages, because the expert priced the owner's entire research budget, the verdict form lumped six secrets into one number, and nobody asked how long the head start lasted. Every one of those failures was visible, and fixable, long before trial. This checklist is built to catch them, on either side of the caption.

The short answer

Trade secret remedies come from 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(3) and the state enactments of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA): an injunction; damages for actual loss plus any unjust enrichment (the defendant's gain) not counted in that loss, or a reasonable royalty in lieu of both; exemplary damages of up to twice the compensatory award for willful and malicious misappropriation; and attorney's fees in three situations. Nearly every remedies failure traces to one of six omissions, and the parts below are arranged to prevent each one:

  1. No early decision about what the client actually needs, so the record supports neither an injunction nor a damages award well (Part 1).
  2. A damages theory that was never disclosed, or never tied to identified secrets (Parts 2, 4, and 5).
  3. A model with no time boundary, no apportionment, or overlapping buckets (Part 5).
  4. An injunction request that assumes irreparable harm or ignores the DTSA's limits on restraining employment (Parts 3 and 10).
  5. A multiplier or fee claim that the evidence, the forum's malice standard, or the whistleblower notice rule cannot support (Part 9).
  6. A missed post-trial deadline, most of which run 14, 28, or 30 days (Part 10).

How to use this checklist

Part 1: Intake, governing law, and the remedy goal

  • Write down what the client needs from the case, in priority order. For an owner: stop the use, recover money, protect specific customer relationships, deter other employees. For the accused: stay in the market, keep the new hire, cap exposure, avoid an admission that customers will read about.
    • The answer decides where the early money goes. An owner that mainly needs use stopped must build irreparable-harm evidence in the first weeks; an owner that mainly needs money must start damages discovery and retain an expert early.
  • List every claim and its remedy menu: the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA), the governing state trade secret statute, contract claims (NDA, invention assignment, noncompete, nonsolicit), computer-access claims, and any common-law claims that survive preemption.
    • The DTSA does not preempt state law, 18 U.S.C. § 1838. Section 7 of the UTSA displaces state tort and restitution claims for misappropriation but preserves contract claims and claims not based on misappropriation; the Seventh Circuit's description of the "dominant view" is that claims are foreclosed only when they rest on the conduct said to misappropriate trade secrets. Hecny Transportation, Inc. v. Chu, 430 F.3d 402 (7th Cir. 2005).
  • Confirm DTSA coverage. The secret must relate to a product or service used in, or intended for use in, interstate or foreign commerce, 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(1), and the statute reaches misappropriation on or after May 11, 2016 (most courts accept use that continued past that date).
  • Map the state-law differences that move the numbers before anyone builds a model:
    • California allows a royalty only if neither actual loss nor unjust enrichment is provable, Cal. Civ. Code § 3426.3(b), and even then the award is discretionary. Ajaxo, Inc. v. E*Trade Financial Corp., 48 Cal. App. 5th 129 (2020), affirmed a trial court that declined to award any royalty after years of litigation.
    • Virginia allows a royalty only if the plaintiff cannot prove a greater amount another way and caps punitive damages at the lesser of twice the award or $350,000, Va. Code § 59.1-338.
    • Texas requires clear and convincing evidence for exemplary damages, assigns them to the fact finder, and defines "willful and malicious misappropriation," Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code §§ 134A.002, 134A.004.
    • New York has no UTSA; its common law bars avoided-cost damages, E.J. Brooks Co. v. Cambridge Security Seals, 31 N.Y.3d 441 (2018).
  • Calendar the limitations period. Three years from actual or constructive discovery, and "a continuing misappropriation constitutes a single claim," 18 U.S.C. § 1836(d); most UTSA states match (for example, Cal. Civ. Code § 3426.6), but check.
  • [Owner] Audit the whistleblower immunity notice in every agreement with each individual defendant.
    • An employer must give notice of the immunity in any contract with an employee that governs trade secrets or confidential information, or cross-reference a policy that does; "employee" includes contractors and consultants; and the rule applies to agreements entered into or updated after May 11, 2016. Without the notice, the employer "may not be awarded exemplary damages or attorney fees" under the DTSA against that individual. 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b)(3)-(4). The rule does not protect the new employer, and state-law multipliers may remain.
  • [Accused] Run the same audit in reverse. A missing notice takes the DTSA multiplier and fee threat off the table for an individual client, which changes settlement math on day one.
  • Read every contract for remedy clauses: liquidated damages, fee shifting, consent to injunctive relief, stipulated irreparable harm, tolling, forum, jury waiver, and arbitration carve-outs for emergency relief.
  • Run an early valuation with three numbers: the owner's best provable measure, the accused party's best alternative number, and a risk-adjusted midpoint. Write it down and share it with the client. Verdict ranges for comparison appear in Damage Statistics: Intellectual Property Litigation.
  • [Owner] Assess collectability. A judgment-proof defendant makes injunctive relief more important than money. A federal court generally cannot freeze assets before judgment to secure a damages claim, Grupo Mexicano de Desarrollo, S.A. v. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc., 527 U.S. 308 (1999), so any asset restraint must rest on an equitable claim to identifiable property, such as traceable proceeds.
  • [Accused] Tender the claim to every potentially responsive insurer and read the intellectual property exclusions; related counts sometimes trigger a defense even when trade secret claims are excluded.

Part 2: Pleading, disclosure, and preserving every remedy

Part 3: Emergency relief: TROs, preliminary injunctions, and civil seizure

The filing mechanics are collected in Preliminary Injunction and TRO Application Checklist: A Practical Checklist.

Part 4: Damages discovery

  • Enter a two-tier protective order before any financial or technical production. Damages discovery collides with secrecy; the order should let outside counsel and experts see attorneys'-eyes-only financials without exposing those figures to the other side's business people. See Trade Secret Identification and Discovery Checklist: A Practical Checklist.
  • Specify native production of transactional data (units, revenue, discounts, cost of goods sold, and margins by product, customer, and month) with field definitions. Fed. R. Civ. P. 34(b)(1)(C).
  • [Owner] Request the accused party's development history: project plans, headcount and budgets, engineering time records, version-control logs, lab notebooks, and launch dates. These documents prove acceleration, avoided costs, and the length of the head start.
  • [Owner] Request internal valuations and plans: board decks, investor materials, business cases, and any document calling the information "competitive intelligence."
  • [Owner] Request customer-level evidence of diversion: bids won and lost, pricing approvals, and communications with customers the owner claims to have lost.
  • [Accused] Request the owner's cost and value records: R&D spending by project, time records allocating engineers to each asserted secret, licensing history and offers, any valuation prepared for financing, acquisition accounting, or tax, and the owner's own development timeline.
  • [Accused] Request the owner's capacity, margin, and lost-sale proof, plus every alternative product the lost customers could have bought.
  • [Accused] Collect public sources for each secret: patents and published applications, papers, conference slides, product teardowns, and supplier literature. These shorten the head start or defeat secrecy outright.
  • Take a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition on how the other side's financial systems work before experts rely on any export. Fed. R. Civ. P. 30(b)(6).
  • Agree on expert discovery ground rules early, including protection for drafts and communications. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(4).

Part 5: Building and testing the damages model

The DTSA allows "damages for actual loss" plus "damages for any unjust enrichment . . . that is not addressed in computing damages for actual loss," or, "in lieu of" those measures, a reasonable royalty. 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b)(3)(B). The items below test each measure; the worksheets are Templates 4 through 9 of the companion toolkit.

Actual loss

Unjust enrichment: the defendant's profits

  • Start from sales actually tied to the secrets, then deduct costs and apportion. Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition § 45 cmt. f puts deductions on the defendant; Motorola Solutions, Inc. v. Hytera Communications Corp., 108 F.4th 458 (7th Cir. 2024), let the defendant reduce total profits by proving its own contributions.
  • Check the forum's burden rule before relying on total revenue. The Supreme Court of Virginia held in Appian that the Virginia statute shifts no part of the burden of proving unjust enrichment to the defendant, affirming the reversal of a $2,036,860,045 verdict built on a burden-shifting instruction.
  • [Accused] Prove non-accused revenue and your own contributions with documents, not testimony alone. A defendant's claim that it could have profited without the secret is speculation if it never tried. C&F Packing Co. v. IBP, Inc., 224 F.3d 1296 (Fed. Cir. 2000) (affirming a $10.9 million unjust enrichment award).
  • Keep equitable remedies proportionate. The Ninth Circuit refused to let a constructive trust capture a brand whose value came "overwhelmingly" from the defendant's legitimate efforts. Mattel, Inc. v. MGA Entertainment, Inc., 616 F.3d 904 (9th Cir. 2010).

Unjust enrichment: avoided development costs

Reasonable royalty

Head start, per-secret allocation, and double counting

General damages proof standards are collected in Damages Proof and Expert Model Checklist: A Practical Checklist, and the patent analogues in Patent Damages Checklist: A Practical Checklist.

Part 6: Damages experts and Rule 702

  • Retain two witnesses, not one: a damages expert and a technical witness who can say what each secret contributed. The damages expert's allocation is only as good as the technical testimony beneath it; in CardiAQ the expert permissibly relied on an engineer's testimony that several of the secrets were of equal value.
  • Serve a complete report with every opinion, its basis, the data considered, and the exhibits. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)(B). Theories that surface late get excluded: the Ajaxo court affirmed exclusion of royalty theories that were not timely disclosed, and Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(c)(1) does the same work in federal court.
  • Test every opinion against amended Rule 702, which since December 1, 2023 requires the proponent to show that it is more likely than not that the opinion rests on sufficient facts, reliable methods, and a reliable application of those methods. Fed. R. Evid. 702; Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993); Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999) (gatekeeping covers economic and other nonscientific testimony).
  • Check fit. A damages model must measure only the damages attributable to the theory of liability. Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 569 U.S. 27 (2013). A model built for 20 secrets does not fit a verdict on 3.
  • [Accused] Build the motion around analytical gaps, the space between data and conclusion that a court need not accept on the expert's say-so. General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (1997). The usual gaps: development cost not allocated to the secrets, whole-product revenue with no apportionment, no head start limit, comparables that are not comparable, and the same dollars counted twice.
  • [Owner] Build redundancy into the record. If the only damages evidence is later held inadmissible, an appellate court may direct judgment rather than order a new trial. Weisgram v. Marley Co., 528 U.S. 440 (2000). Keep a fallback measure, per-secret numbers, and sensitivity tables in the report.
  • Do not over-litigate hindsight. Ex post evidence may inform a hypothetical negotiation, as CardiAQ held by analogy to Lucent Technologies, Inc. v. Gateway, Inc., 580 F.3d 1301 (Fed. Cir. 2009), so attack its weight rather than its admissibility.
  • Plan the financial summaries now. Voluminous sales data can come in through a summary chart if the underlying records were made available. Fed. R. Evid. 1006.

Deposition planning for both sides' damages experts is covered in Expert Deposition Preparation Checklist: A Practical Checklist and Expert Disclosure and Daubert Challenge Checklist: A Practical Checklist.

Part 7: Defenses that shrink the award

Most of these belong to the accused party, but the owner should test its own model against every one of them before the other side does.

  • Independent development and reverse engineering. Lawful means are not improper means. 18 U.S.C. § 1839(6)(B). Collect clean-room records, dated design files, and the engineers who did the work. The burden of proving misappropriation stays with the plaintiff, so this evidence rebuts rather than shifts the burden.
  • Public availability and the end of the head start. A published patent application ends secrecy for what it discloses, Attia v. Google LLC, 983 F.3d 420 (9th Cir. 2020), and lawful reverse engineering starts the clock that ended the recoverable period in TAOS.
  • No use, or no causal link to sales. Show that the accused product's design or customer wins predate access, or would have happened anyway.
  • Apportionment. Isolate non-accused products, the defendant's own features, brand, and sales force. In Appian, excluding the defendant's evidence of revenue from other product lines was reversible error.
  • Limitations and preemption. Three years under 18 U.S.C. § 1836(d); displacement of duplicative state tort claims under UTSA § 7.
  • Whistleblower immunity for disclosures made in confidence to government officials or an attorney to report a suspected violation of law, or under seal in a court filing. 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b)(1).
  • Delay and mitigation. An owner that sat on its rights may face arguments that it allowed avoidable losses to accumulate, and delay always bears on equitable relief.
  • Overclaiming. A plaintiff that asserts dozens of secrets and proves a handful loses credibility with the jury and invites a bad-faith fee motion (Part 9).
  • Settlement credits. Plead set-off before judgment and prove joint-tortfeasor status (Advanced Fluid Systems).
  • [Owner] Close the defenses off with your own evidence: proof that the defendant could not have developed the technology without the theft (the Sokol jury "may well have concluded" exactly that), and evidence of concealment that undercuts any claimed independent development.

Part 8: Trial: who decides, instructions, and the verdict form

  • Sort every remedy between judge and jury before the pretrial order.
    • Actual loss and royalty damages are legal and go to the jury.
    • Disgorgement of the defendant's profits may be equitable: TAOS found no Seventh Amendment right to a jury on disgorgement, Hard Candy, LLC v. Anastasia Beverly Hills, Inc., 921 F.3d 1343 (11th Cir. 2019), reached the same result for Lanham Act profits, and the district court in Motorola treated the jury's unjust enrichment findings as advisory.
    • Injunctions, royalty injunctions, fees, and interest belong to the court.
    • Under the DTSA "the court may award" exemplary damages. Under statutes with that wording, courts commonly have the jury find willful and malicious conduct and then decide the award themselves (FJC Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide § 10.9.1); in O2 Micro the jury made the finding and the court awarded the maximum, twice a $900,000 royalty. Texas assigns exemplary damages to the fact finder, and Learning Curve Toys, Inc. v. PlayWood Toys, Inc., 342 F.3d 714 (7th Cir. 2003), remanded the Illinois exemplary damages claim for a jury trial.
  • Try common facts to the jury first. When legal and equitable claims share factual issues, the jury decides those issues before the court rules on equitable relief. Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500 (1959); Dairy Queen, Inc. v. Wood, 369 U.S. 469 (1962).
  • Decide whether to use an advisory jury on equitable remedies, Fed. R. Civ. P. 39(c), and remember the court must then make its own findings. Fed. R. Civ. P. 52(a). In Motorola, arguments presented to the court in Rule 52(b) filings were preserved because the court, not the advisory jury, was the factfinder.
  • Tailor the instructions to the evidence. The Federal Judicial Center's Trade Secret Case Management Judicial Guide § 10.7 (2023) warns against form instructions built on the old Restatement six-factor list and against treating independent development as an affirmative defense.
  • Instruct on the damages period. The Tenth Circuit approved an instruction limiting unjust enrichment to the time the secret was entitled to protection plus any further period of competitive advantage. Russo v. Ballard Medical Products, 550 F.3d 1004 (10th Cir. 2008).
  • Draft the verdict form as carefully as the instructions, with separate questions for each secret or agreed group, each measure, each period, and willful and malicious conduct by each defendant, plus an express direction not to award the same dollars twice. Fed. R. Civ. P. 49. The FJC guide calls the verdict form "at least as important and fraught with the potential for error as the instructions."
  • Object on the record to instructions and the form before deliberations, Fed. R. Civ. P. 51(c), and raise any inconsistency before the jury is discharged.
  • [Accused] Move for judgment as a matter of law on each damages theory before the case goes to the jury, so the motion can be renewed after verdict. Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(a).

Trial materials, including instruction and verdict form templates, are collected in Jury Trial Toolkit: Voir Dire, Openings, Exhibits, and Instructions.

Part 9: Exemplary damages, fees, interest, and costs

The fee and cost mechanics are covered in Attorney Fee Petition and Bill of Costs Checklist: A Practical Checklist.

Part 10: Permanent injunctions, post-trial motions, and appeal

The deadlines and motion standards are developed in Post-Trial Motion Checklist: A Practical Checklist; enforcement steps are in Contempt and Enforcement Checklist: A Practical Checklist.

Part 11: Parallel criminal cases and restitution

  • [Owner] Decide deliberately whether to refer the matter to prosecutors. A referral brings search warrants and grand jury subpoenas, but it costs control of timing, may produce a stay of the civil case, and invites Fifth Amendment invocations that complicate civil discovery.
  • Know the criminal exposure, because it drives settlement: up to ten years for individuals under 18 U.S.C. § 1832(a), and for organizations a fine of up to the greater of $5 million or three times the value of the stolen secret, "including expenses for research and design and other costs of reproducing the trade secret that the organization has thereby avoided," § 1832(b). Economic espionage carries higher limits. 18 U.S.C. § 1831.
  • Map restitution to the actual loss. Restitution is mandatory for property offenses with identifiable victims, 18 U.S.C. § 3663A, follows the procedures of 18 U.S.C. § 3664, and applies to trade secret crimes through 18 U.S.C. § 1834 and 18 U.S.C. § 2323. It reaches only losses caused by the conduct underlying the offense of conviction (a limit the statute relaxes for schemes and conspiracies), Hughey v. United States, 495 U.S. 411 (1990), and covers investigation costs only for participation in the government's investigation and prosecution, not private investigations or civil litigation. Lagos v. United States, 584 U.S. 577 (2018).
  • Expect a fight over the loss figure. The Sixth Circuit vacated a zero-loss sentencing finding where the government had offered three estimates ($305,000 in contract value, $520,000 to recreate the design, and $20 million in annual product sales) and the district court gave too little explanation for finding no loss at all. United States v. Howley, 707 F.3d 575 (6th Cir. 2013). Pu shows the opposite error: adopting development cost without analysis.
  • Coordinate recoveries. Under § 3664(j)(2), any amount paid under a restitution order is reduced by compensatory damages the victim later recovers for the same loss in a civil case, so model the two together. Victims' procedural rights are covered in Crime Victims' Rights: Notice, Participation, Restitution, and Compensation.

Part 12: Settlement valuation and terms

  • Value each measure separately, per secret and per period, then discount for liability risk, appellate risk, and collection risk. Add the exemplary and fee exposure in both directions.
  • [Owner] Get the non-monetary terms that money cannot buy: a stipulated injunction or consent judgment enforceable by contempt, return and destruction with forensic certification, an audit right for a fixed period, a clean-room protocol for any redesign, and cooperation against third parties.
  • [Accused] Trade those terms for value: a license (paid-up or running) if continued use matters, a defined end date for restrictions, mutual releases that cover employees, and no admission of liability.
  • Structure payment to survive default: installments with acceleration, a stipulated judgment held in escrow, and security.
  • Use Rule 68 with eyes open. An unaccepted offer shifts post-offer costs, but costs include fees only when the underlying statute defines fees as part of costs, Marek v. Chesny, 473 U.S. 1 (1985), and the DTSA fee provision does not. Fed. R. Civ. P. 68.
  • Protect the negotiation record. Settlement communications are inadmissible to prove or disprove the validity or amount of a disputed claim. Fed. R. Evid. 408.
  • In multi-defendant cases, allocate settlement dollars among claims and parties in the agreement itself, so the set-off fight later has an answer (Advanced Fluid Systems).

Drafting language for these terms is in Settlement Toolkit: Term Sheets, Releases, Offers of Judgment, and Enforcement.

Common mistakes this checklist is designed to catch

  • Pricing avoided costs with the owner's entire research budget instead of the defendant's actual savings on the secrets found (Syntel, Pu).
  • Presenting one lump-sum number for many secrets, so a partial verdict leaves nothing to stand on (O2 Micro).
  • Leaving a damages category out of initial disclosures and losing it to preclusion (Design Strategy).
  • Asking for an injunction that keeps someone from taking a job, or one with no end date (§ 1836(b)(3)(A)(i); Sigma).
  • Promising a multiplier against an employee who never received the whistleblower notice (§ 1833(b)(3)).
  • Counting the same dollars as lost profits, unjust enrichment, and avoided costs (Salsbury).
  • Assuming the jury decides disgorgement, or that the judge does, without checking the circuit (TAOS, Motorola).
  • Skipping the Rule 50(b) motion and losing appellate review of the damages evidence (Unitherm).
  • Asking for prejudgment interest after the Rule 59(e) window closes (Osterneck), or under a state statute that does not allow it (C&F Packing).
  • Raising settlement set-off for the first time after judgment (Advanced Fluid Systems).
  • Expecting expert fees as taxable costs under the DTSA (Crawford Fitting, Rimini Street).

Frequently asked questions

Can the owner recover both its own lost profits and the defendant's profits? Only the part of the defendant's gain that the lost-profits figure does not already capture. The DTSA allows unjust enrichment "not addressed in computing damages for actual loss." Profits the defendant earned on sales the owner would have made are counted once; profits on sales the owner could never have made can be added. Motorola framed the choice as the larger of two non-overlapping paths.

Are avoided development costs recoverable if the owner lost nothing? It depends on the circuit and the state. The Second Circuit in Syntel required a harm beyond the owner's actual loss where the owner kept the secret's full value and an injunction stopped the use; the Seventh and Third Circuits have affirmed avoided-cost awards without a matching loss; New York common law does not allow them at all. Build the record for whichever rule applies, and plead in the alternative.

Does the judge or the jury decide unjust enrichment? Lost profits and royalties are for the jury. Disgorgement of the defendant's profits may be equitable and therefore for the court (TAOS), and some courts use the jury only in an advisory role (Motorola). Demand a jury, ask the court to rule on the allocation before trial, and request findings under Rule 52 for anything the court decides.

How long should a trade secret injunction last? As long as needed to erase the defendant's head start, and no longer. Courts have entered injunctions ranging from about six months (PepsiCo) and eight months (Lamb-Weston) to two years (Winston) and a seven-year production ban (General Electric v. Sung). Credit time already served under a preliminary injunction (K-2 Ski), and include a way to dissolve the order once the information is public or stale.

Can a DTSA injunction stop a former employee from taking a new job? No. The DTSA forbids orders that "prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship," and any conditions on employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation rather than on what the person knows. State law can be stricter (California rejects inevitable disclosure) or, in a few states, more permissive.

What if the defendant never made a dime from the secret? Failure to profit is not a defense. University Computing put "the risk of defendants' venture" on the defendant, GlobeRanger affirmed avoided costs far exceeding the defendant's profit, and StorageCraft affirmed a royalty against a defendant who disclosed rather than used the secret. In California, though, a royalty remains discretionary even then (Ajaxo).

Does a criminal restitution order change the civil damages case? It can reduce what the victim ultimately collects. Restitution is capped by the loss caused by the offense of conviction (Hughey) and excludes private investigation and civil litigation costs (Lagos), and amounts paid under a restitution order are reduced by later civil recoveries for the same loss under § 3664(j)(2).

Practical takeaways

  • Decide the remedy goal at intake and spend early money on the evidence that goal needs: irreparable harm for an injunction, financial and development records for damages.
  • Disclose every damages theory early and update it, or expect to lose it at trial.
  • Model each secret, each measure, and each period separately, with a head start boundary and no overlapping dollars.
  • Treat the injunction as a precision instrument: specific, time-limited, employment-neutral, and coordinated with the damages award.
  • Earn the multiplier with evidence of concealment and bad conduct, and confirm the whistleblower notice before promising one.
  • Calendar post-trial deadlines the day the verdict comes in: 14 days for fees, 28 days for Rule 50(b), 52(b), and 59 motions (including prejudgment interest), and 30 days for the notice of appeal.

This document is general information, not legal advice for any particular situation; the law changes, and the facts matter.

Related Documents

Companion documents in this series

Related Articles and Guides

Related Checklists

Related Toolkits