Rule 3.502.Complex case—determination

Rule 3.502 is short on purpose. It does not set out its own test for what makes a case complex; instead, it points the court to rule 3.400 and the rules that follow it, the provisions that define complex litigation and lay out how a court identifies and manages it. When a court has to decide whether a case is complex for purposes of Code of Civil Procedure sections 403 and 404, this rule tells it to use that existing framework rather than inventing a separate standard just for the coordination context.

The rule sits at the entrance to Chapter 7. Coordination of complex actions presupposes that the actions involved are, in fact, complex, so before any of the procedures in the rules that follow come into play, someone has to make that initial determination. Rule 3.502 keeps that determination anchored to a single, consistent set of criteria across every complex case in the state, rather than letting each coordination proceeding drift toward its own informal understanding of what counts as complex.