Rule 3.Commencing an Action

Rule 3 answers a question that sounds simple but matters enormously in practice: when does a case officially start? The rule's answer is equally direct — a civil action is commenced by filing a complaint with the court. Nothing else is required to open the case. The plaintiff does not need to have already served the defendant, obtained a summons, or taken any other step; the act of filing is what commences the action.

That filing date does real work beyond marking day one on the docket. Rule 4's service provisions run their clock from this same date — a plaintiff generally has 60 days from the filing of the complaint to serve the defendant and file proof of that service. So while Rule 3 itself says nothing about deadlines, the date it fixes becomes the reference point the rest of the case's early timeline is built around.

Rule 3 covers every type of civil action within the scope of these rules, subject to the exceptions Rule 1 already carves out. Whatever the claim — contract, tort, property, or something else — the starting mechanism is the same single step: file the complaint.