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I'm working on my motion for summary judgment for my pretrial practice class and i cannot, for the life of me, decide what way is best to cite to the complaint when it is attached as an exhibit to my statement of facts.

Should it be something like (Pl. Compl. Par. 5 (Exhibit A)) or (Exhibit A, Par. 5) or just cite to the complaint?

I've looked through both bluebook and ALWD and haven't been able to figure it out. Anyone have any suggestions?

It's due tomorrow morning and i didn't go through and acutally put my cites in until yesterday, so I can't ask the prof. before it's due.

You don't normally attach the complaint as an exhibit. It's part of the same record as the Motion. Just (Compl. Para symbol, etc) it's also not clear you need Pl., as there can only be one complaint in a case.

The Duck wrote:You don't normally attach the complaint as an exhibit. It's part of the same record as the Motion. Just (Compl. Para symbol, etc) it's also not clear you need Pl., as there can only be one complaint in a case.

I agree, however the professor specifically told us to attach the complaint if we cite to it (because he will be getting 15 or 16 different motions, all of which have different complaints). I figured I would have trouble citing to this simply because it is typically not attached as an exhibit.

But thanks for the feedback..I'm just going to leave it the way it is and if he takes points off I'll go fight with him

I don't know that one or the other is right, but I'd go with "(Exhibit A, Par. 5)" for simplicity's sake, just cite like it's any other exhibit. However, if you are citing to the complaint in the midst of citing to other exhibits, I might go with "(Complaint Par. 5 (Exhibit A))" just to make sure that it's clear to the reader when I'm citing to an allegation from the Complaint versus citing to some objectively factual evidence.