In the United States legal system, the target of a lawsuit can submit a so-called "motion to dismiss" to the judge presiding the case. If the judge deems the motion valid, then the case will just be dismissed and will not proceed further.
Rather obviously, the motion to dismiss has to give a good argument why the lawsuit should be dismissed and, also rather obviously, these arguments need to meet certain criteria (so as to not infringe on the legal rights of the person suing.)
In general, a "motion to dismiss" argues that the lawsuit is invalid.
There are several reasons why a lawsuit may be legitimately invalid. For example, if the lawsuit fails to actually cite any existing law that has been allegedly broken. If someone sues someone because he thinks that someone looks too ugly, that's a quite clear immediate dismissal because there is no law for that, and thus the lawsuit isn't even citing any law that's allegedly broken.
Another reason is, even if the lawsuit refers to an actual law, if the alleged action is not punishable. One typical situation where this is the case is if the alleged crime happened too long ago, ie. it has passed the statute of limitations: Even if the accused would be found guilty of the crime, there would be no conviction because the crime has expired. If the judge corroborates that this is indeed the case, the motion to dismiss is usually considered valid.
A lawsuit can also be dismissed in this manner if it's very clearly frivolous and ridiculous, or outright impossible, even if it technically cites an existing law. Like, for example, suing a 1-year-old for having built a nuclear weapon, or something like that.
There are also a few other such situations, but the general principle is: A motion to dismiss argues that the lawsuit itself is invalid.
What a motion to dismiss does not and cannot argue is that the accused is innocent of wrongdoing and didn't commit the crime, or that the crime didn't happen. Those are arguments to be made and evaluated during trial, not in a motion-to-dismiss. A motion-to-dismiss cannot ask for the judge to rule on guilt or non-guilt of the accused before the trial has even begun. That's not what those motions are for.
In other words, a motion-to-dismiss is not and cannot be a request to have the judge rule on the case and declare guilt or not guilt prematurely, without any trial. In other words, it cannot be of the form "yes, the lawsuit may be technically legit, but my client is innocent and didn't do it."
Yet, incredibly, that's actually what 99% of motions-to-dismiss actually do! When you read or hear about any such motion, it's almost never a "the lawsuit is technically invalid", but almost always a "my client didn't do it."
Ok, perhaps that's not actually the incredible part. After all, lawyers will try all kinds of tricks. If the motion-to-dismiss is not correct, the judge will just deny it, and the lawsuit will proceed as normal.
Except... and here's where the incredible part starts: Many times judges will not do that, and instead accept the motion and make a ruling on the case, as if it had gone through the trial process.
There are many examples of this, some quite egregious, eg. ones where the judge's ruling is very long and gives lengthy arguments about why the defendant is not guilty, without a single word about the validity of the lawsuit itself. Even though this is not what motions to dismiss are supposed to be about!
In other words, not "the lawsuit is invalid because of this and this technicality", but "the accused is not guilty because of this and this, motion to dismiss granted."
That's what I don't understand. Fine, lawyers will often opportunistically make spurious motions-to-dismiss, almost by convention. What's incredible is that many judges will take those motions seriously and make a judgment on the case based solely on them, even though they shouldn't.
And this seems to be common practice. I have never heard of any judge being reprimanded or experiencing any consequences from this kind of thing.
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