A non-suit (British English) or nonsuit (American English) is a legal procedure. A plaintiff (or other person bringing a civil action, such as a petitioner) drops his or her suit, under certain circumstances that do not prevent another action being brought later on the same facts. United States In the United States, a voluntary nonsuit is a motion taken by the plaintiff to release one or more of the defendants from liability. An example would be a plaintiff suing a physician and a hospital for damages resulting from surgical complications. If the plaintiff settles with the physician, the plaintiff would nonsuit the physician (removing him/her from the suit) but maintain action against the hospital and the suit would continue. If the plaintiff later settles with the hospital before trial, the resulting nonsuit would end the case as all defendants have been released. A nonsuit is a right of the plaintiff, but it may be prevented if the defendant has pleaded for affirmative relief. The law in the United States was established as early as 1828 when the Supreme Court ruled: A compulsory nonsuit is a decision by a court that a case cannot proceed to trial, either on substantive or procedural grounds. Depending on which grounds the nonsuit is entered, the plaintiff may or may not be able to file his case again. In the U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the term does not appear, but a dismissal under Rules 12 and 41 has a similar effect. Often, the term "nonsuit" will appear in older U.S. cases. The meaning of the term in most of these older cases is the same as described for the United Kingdom (see below). This is because most colonies, upon separation from England, still used English common law (as no U.S. or state-specific laws had yet been passed). In more modern parlance, this type of motion is known as a "motion of dismissal". A few code pleading states still use the term "nonsuit" to refer to an involuntary or compulsory nonsuit which is granted at the request of an opponent. For example, in California, a motion for nonsuit under California Code of Civil Procedure Section 581c "is a procedural device which allows a defendant to challenge the sufficiency of plaintiff's evidence to submit the case to the jury," and it cannot be granted if the plaintiff's evidence would be sufficient to support a jury