Napa County trial document templates
Not legal advice. Rules checked against the code on August 20, 2026. Verify every date yourself. Read the full disclaimer
Core CCP rules were checked against Westlaw (via CoCounsel legal research) on August 20, 2026. County local rules are paraphrased summaries. Individual department and judge standing orders are included only where the court publishes them and we have read the document, so assume your own department has requirements beyond what you see here. Verify every date against the operative code sections, your court’s rules and your department’s own order before relying on it. Using this site creates no attorney-client relationship.
10 documents, 14 required sections, taken from Superior Court of California, County of Napa’s own published rules and read 2026-09-14. Each one downloads as California pleading paper with this court’s required sections already placed, so the document cannot silently omit one.
A blank template is easy to find anywhere. What is hard to find is which sections this court requires inside the document, because that lives in a local rule nobody indexes. Every heading below is cited to the subdivision it came from, and the rule’s own sentence prints beside it in the reference sheet so you can check your work.
Download these as templates
The reference sheet below carries everything this court requires, each rule quoted from its own text and cited to the subdivision. The pleading paper templates are temporarily down while the line numbering is rebuilt, because the rail did not line up with the body text and a pleading whose lines cannot be cited is worse than no template at all.
Your details optional, blanks print as ruled lines
These stay in this browser. They are not sent anywhere, and the file is built on this machine, so a case name never reaches our server.
- Settlement Conference Statement
- Motion in Limine
- Witness List
- Trial Exhibits (marked, tagged and lodged)
- Opposition to Motion in Limine
- Courtesy Copies of Motions in Limine
- Trial Brief
- Joint Exhibits List
- Proposed Jury Instructions
- Statement of the Case
What each document has to carry
Settlement Conference Statement
Prepared by each party. Submitted to the court and served on each party, no later than 10 calendar days before the scheduled settlement conference. Applies to all civil actions other than unlawful detainer. Napa Local Rule 6.6.2
- Contents required on top of California Rules of Court, rule 3.1380(c)
- Everything California Rules of Court, rule 3.1380(c) already requires
- The factual and legal contentions in dispute
- A list of all special damages claimed
- Documentary evidence pertinent to the issue of damages, attached to the statement
Motion in Limine
Prepared by each party. Filed, filed with the Clerk of the Court no later than ten (10) court days before the Trial Management Conference. Applies to all civil trials. Napa Local Rule 6.5(D)
- Form of the motion
- A motion in limine in writing, because the Court will not hear an oral motion in limine
Witness List
Prepared by each party. Filed and served, exchanged no later than five (5) court days before the Trial Management Conference, and filed before the conference. Applies to all civil trials. Napa Local Rule 6.5(B)
- Contents of the witness list
- Every witness the party anticipates calling at trial
- A brief description of each witness's anticipated testimony
Trial Exhibits (marked, tagged and lodged)
Prepared by each party. Lodged, exchanged no later than five (5) court days before the Trial Management Conference, and lodged with the Court on the date of the conference. Applies to all civil trials. Napa Local Rule 6.5(A)
- Exchange of exhibits with opposing counsel
- All trial exhibits, exchanged between counsel
- The one exception, an exhibit anticipated in good faith to be used solely for impeachment
- Marking, tagging and lodging the exhibits themselves
- Every exhibit the party intends to introduce at trial, marked by counsel as an exhibit
- A tag on the exhibit
- The case number written on the bottom center of the tag
- The designation Plaintiff, Petitioner, Defendant, Respondent or Joint on the tag
- Agreed manner of marking, and internal pagination
- A marking convention agreed on by meet and confer
- One acceptable option, plaintiffs and petitioners marking numerically and defendants and respondents marking alphabetically
- Sequential internal pagination on any exhibit longer than one page
- Index of exhibits handed up at the conference
- An index of exhibits
- The corresponding number or letter for each exhibit
- Form of the exhibits, and audio, video or other digital media
- Paper filing, or e-filing where available, as the only acceptable means of filing an exhibit
- Exhibits that are legible and complete, and that do not require use of another resource to hear or view them
- No CD, DVD or other digital storage device as a filed exhibit
- For a sound, video or other digital file, the lodged recording
- A filed transcript of the recording, or a description where transcription is impossible
- An original notice of lodgment listing and describing what is lodged
Opposition to Motion in Limine
Prepared by each party. Filed, filed at least five (5) court days before the Trial Management Conference. Applies to all civil trials. Napa Local Rule 6.5(D)
- Written opposition
- A written opposition to each motion in limine the party contests
Courtesy Copies of Motions in Limine
Prepared by each party. Delivered to the clerk, by noon on the Monday before the Trial Management Conference, or Tuesday where that Monday is a court holiday. Applies to all civil trials in which motions in limine are filed. Napa Local Rule 6.5(D)
- What goes in the binder
- Courtesy copies of each of that party's motions in limine
- Any oppositions
- All supporting declarations
- One or more three ring binders
- Tabs separating each motion and its related documents
Trial Brief
Prepared by each party. Filed and served, filed and served no later than three (3) court days before the Trial Management Conference. Applies to all jury trials regardless of estimated duration, and bench trials with an estimated duration of two or more days. Napa Local Rule 6.5(C)
- Required contents
- A brief summary of the case
- The issues needing resolution at trial
- The legal arguments the party intends to make
Joint Exhibits List
Prepared jointly. Filed, filed no later than two (2) court days before the Trial Management Conference. Applies to all civil trials. Napa Local Rule 6.5(A)
- Contents of the Joint Exhibits List
- Every exhibit the parties agree is authentic and admissible, identified on the list
- The stipulation language the rule prescribes, on the face of the list
- The signature of counsel for all parties
Proposed Jury Instructions
Prepared by each party, with the agreed joint list prepared by the parties together. Filed, filed with the clerk no later than the Trial Management Conference. Applies to jury trials only. Napa Local Rule 6.5(E)
- Lists and instructions to be filed
- An agreed upon joint list of jury instructions
- Each party's separate list of the instructions it requests and the other side contests
- All proposed instructions, filed with the clerk
- Every blank filled in
- Brackets stricken or removed
- Points and authorities on a contested instruction
Statement of the Case
Prepared jointly. Lodged, lodged with the clerk no later than the Trial Management Conference. Applies to jury trials only. Napa Local Rule 6.5(F)
- The summary read to the jury
- A brief summary of the factual nature of the case
- Non-argumentative wording
- Agreement of the parties, reached by meet and confer in advance of the Trial Management Conference
Start with the joint documents
3 of these are prepared jointly: Joint Exhibits List; Proposed Jury Instructions; Statement of the Case. A joint document needs a meet and confer before it can be filed, so it sets the real deadline even though the filing date is the same as everything else.
When each one is due
Most of these do not run off the trial date. They run off the trial management conference, which the court sets, and counting back from trial instead is the commonest way one gets missed. The full rule list for Napa County carries every rule with its quoted text, and the trial countdown calculator computes the statewide CCP chain.
How these were built
Every rule was researched from the court’s own published text, then checked a second time by a reader told to assume a rule had been invented. Grouping those rules into the documents a court actually wants was a further pass, and an adversarial check corrected it: the commonest error was a document whose contents the first pass left empty while the rule enumerated them. Templates are generated in your browser, so nothing you type is sent anywhere. See methodology.
Related: All courts with templates · Napa trial binder rules · Trial countdown calculator