Rule 80.Review of Administrative Action.

Subdivision (a) folds several old routes into one. When a statute lets the Family Court review what a governmental agency, department, board, commission or officer has done — by appeal, by petition, or under any other name — you begin the case the way you begin a lawsuit: file a complaint, file whatever other document the law requires, and pay the fees the law prescribes. The same holds where judicial review of the action was previously available by extraordinary writ. The complaint has to do two things: state in concise form the grounds on which you claim relief, and demand judgment for the relief you want.

The agency may file nothing at all. Subdivision (a) says no responsive pleading is needed unless a statute requires one or the court orders one, so an agency that files nothing has still done everything this rule asks of it. Subdivision (b) is where the clock lives, and the rule keeps none of its own. It sends you to the law that supplies the right of review. Find that deadline first, because Rule 80 will not supply one.

Subdivision (b) also handles notice, and it is wider than most people expect. A copy of the complaint goes to the agency, department, board, commission or officer whose action you challenge, and to every other party to the proceeding you want reviewed — so anyone who appeared against you at the agency gets a copy too. Service is in the manner provided by Rule 5, the rule for serving and filing pleadings and other papers, so the complaint travels by the ordinary paper-service route rather than as process.

Subdivision (c) makes these rules govern the review proceeding so far as they are applicable, which leaves the judge to sort out which parts of everyday Family Court practice belong in a review. At the end the court affirms, reverses, or modifies the decision under review, and it does each of those as the law provides. All three dispositions point at a decision someone has already made, not at a claim being tried for the first time.