I believe I read somewhere that email from defendant to plaintiff can be included in the complaint as an exhibit.

In my breach of contract case, the contract and receipts are of course all attached.
But defense emailed me a policy about rescheduling, in order to induce a contract, and contractor had since reneged on his policy. I consider the policy, the marketing materials part of the contract. He emailed them to me a few days before we signed the contract.

Can this email be included in the complaint? Don't want to incur "facts not in evidence", but since it was from him to me, isn't it fair to attach?

SUZANNE7 ...

The procedure taught in my course is to use Requests for Admissions to authenticate things like emails. In general, without giving you "legal advice", I usually do not include too much "evidence" in my complaints, because it must later be authenticated anyway. All explained in my course.

Hope this helps.

Thank-you. Yes. But what I was getting at, none too articulately, was the new rules of self-authenticating evidence...
do they not now include emails from defense opposition party to plaintiff ? I believe I read that somewhere.

I've otherwise written up my complaint as you prescribed, I believe, to extract as much admission in the pleadings phase, up front, even before formal discovery. I've used simple one noun/verb sentences for admit/deny/no knowledge responses.

I showed this approach to a legalshield lawyer and he said something to the effect that complaints should be just a few pages, tops, just a short summary and accusations only. But, if I'm getting your webnotes right, I would agree more with your approach: Early clarity would seem far better especially now that my state has mandatory arbitration for all cases under $100K and they have their own evidentiary rules (they are up to the arbitrator, but in general discovery is kept very brief). My thinking was that to have
better clarity and admissions in the complaint would be better than getting it later...there may not be a later.

Would you concur or not with any of these points? And what of the self-authenticating email from opposition? Thank-you.

I never want to get into a spitting contest with my opponents over what is and what is not authenticated evidence, so I use discovery tools as taught in my course so there is no wiggle room for my opponent to muddy the waters.

As for the LegalShield lawyer, know that 9 out of 10 lawyers I dealt with in my 33 years had no idea how to use discovery in a proper and effective manner. You should keep pleadings short and to the point, alleging all necessary essential elements of all your causes of action, but you can also allege facts your opponent must admit or deny, thus giving you a jump on the discovery process that has limited tools.

Thank you
yes, no spitting contests
I suppose I could quote the relevant 6 words of the policy sentence and then they could admit/deny that small part.
It's an essential part of the contract, it said "Contractor will reschedule for delays". Instead he quit and kept all prepaids and didn't do the work.

And with mandatory arbitration (required by the state) there will be limited discovery.
I'll be sending you this complaint for a quick review soon.
Can I email it and mail the check, wait for it to clear and then perhaps you can mark it up in Word for ways to better this?