§ 25-801.01.Rules of pleading; Supreme Court; promulgate.

Section 25-801.01 marks the moment the Legislature stepped back from writing Nebraska’s pleading rules and handed that job to the Supreme Court. It ordered the Court to have rules of pleading in civil actions in place by January 1, 2003, rules that could not conflict with the statutes still governing pleading topics. For every civil action filed on or after that date, those Supreme Court rules — not the older statutory scheme that once filled the rest of Chapter 25, Article 8 — set the day-to-day standards for what a pleading must say and how it must be put together. That is why so few section numbers remain active in this article today: the Legislature moved most pleading procedure out of the statute books and into court rule, leaving only narrower topics, like frivolous-pleading sanctions and defamation pleading requirements, still governed directly by statute.

The section also settles what to call a plaintiff’s opening pleading. Where some other statute already designates a “petition” — the traditional Nebraska term — that label still applies. In every other civil action, the plaintiff’s first pleading is called a “complaint,” the term used in federal practice and most other states.

Several older pleading devices disappear under this section. The cross-petition, cross-bill, and cross-suit are abolished outright. So are demurrers and special appearances as ways to challenge a pleading or the court’s jurisdiction. The plea in bar, the plea in abatement, and other dilatory pleas — technical devices litigants once used to delay or divert a case without addressing its merits — are likewise off the table in civil actions.

Finally, the section sets a rule of construction that runs through everything that follows: courts must read pleadings in whatever way does substantial justice. That instruction favors deciding cases on their merits over dismissing them for a technical slip in the wording of a pleading.