Sanctions, in
law and legal definition, are penalties or other means of enforcement used to provide incentives for obedience with the
law, or with rules and
regulations. Criminal sanctions can take the form of serious
punishment, such as
corporal or
capital punishment,
incarceration, or severe
fines. Within the
civil law context, sanctions are usually monetary fines, levied against a party to a
lawsuit or his/her attorney, for violating rules of
procedure, or for abusing the
judicial process. The most severe sanction in a civil lawsuit is the
involuntary dismissal,
with prejudice, of a complaining party's
cause of action, or of the responding party's answer. This has the effect of deciding the entire action against the sanctioned party without recourse, except to the degree that an
appeal or
trial de novo may be allowed because of
reversible error.