英和和英

名詞

friendly suit (複数形 friendly suits)

1. (law) The situation where a person sues another person (friend) purely to settle a point of (unsettled) law.
   • 2007, Norman Redlich, ‎John B. Attanasio, ‎& Joel K. Goldstein, Understanding Constitutional Law, ISBN 1422486605:

     Federal courts cannot adjudicate a friendly suit, collusively arranged between non-adverse parties to obtain the judicial resolution of some constitutional issue.

   • 2015, Kate Mayfield, The Undertaker's Daughter, ISBN 1476757283, page 293:

     The summer after my freshman year in college, four years after the death of Miss Agnes, my father's bank filed a friendly suit against him to receive the court's interpretation of Miss Agnes's will.

2. (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this sense?) (law) The situation where two subsidiaries of the same parent company accidentally sue each other, not realising that they have the same owner. An analogy is "friendly fire", where a person accidentally shoots someone on his or her own side.