Through civil forfeiture, the federal government can take ownership of property merely by proving it “guilty” by a preponderance of the evidence. The government need not formally accuse its owner of any crime. Yet the procedural mechanisms available to a property owner who wishes to contest a forfeiture are limited, complex, and strictly enforced. A creature of admiralty law, civil forfeiture draws on supplemental provisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure with which many lawyers and federal judges are unfamiliar.

This Comment explores an active circuit split and identifies an undertheorized way for property owners to vindicate their rights: counterclaims against the government. Though the great majority of federal courts to address the question have summarily dismissed property owners’ counterclaims in civil forfeiture actions, those courts are mistaken. The civil forfeiture counterclaim finds strong support in the Civil Rules’ text, as well as in their historical context, purpose, and original public understanding. In the words of then-Judge Charles E. Clark, the principal drafter of the Civil Rules, courts should remove the “interpretative barnacles” that have made it unnecessarily difficult for property owners to defend themselves in civil forfeiture actions.

通过民事没收，联邦政府可以仅通过以优势证据证明其“有罪”来取得财产的所有权。政府无需正式指控其所有者犯有任何罪行。然而，希望对没收提出抗辩的财产所有人可用的程序机制是有限的、复杂的，并且得到严格执行。作为海事法的产物，民事没收借鉴了许多律师和联邦法官不熟悉的联邦民事诉讼规则的补充条款。

本评论探讨了一个活跃的电路分裂，并确定了一种让业主维护自己权利的理论不足的方式：对政府的反诉。尽管绝大多数解决这个问题的联邦法院都在民事没收诉讼中立即驳回了财产所有者的反诉，但这些法院是错误的。民事没收反诉在《民事规则》文本及其历史背景、目的和原始公众理解中得到了强有力的支持。用当时的《民事规则》主要起草人查尔斯·E·克拉克法官的话来说，法院应该移除那些使财产所有人在民事没收诉讼中为自己辩护变得不必要的困难的“解释性藤壶”。