PLEADING at Common Law. Pleadings are the allegations of the respective parties to a cause expressed in technical language. In order that a correct decision may he made upon disputed rights, it is fleeces nary that the points to be decided should be clearly ascertained, and this is effected by the system of pleading, whereby the precise points In controversy arc presented for decision, unencumbered with extraneous matter.
Actions are now commenced by writ of summons, calling upon the defendant to appear, or otherwise the plaintiff will proceed to judgment and execution. If the defendant fails to appear, the plaintiff obtains a judgment by default. If be appears in court to answer the proceedings against him, he is then entitled toTeceive from the plaintiff a detailed statement of the nature of his complaint, which is called the declara tion, narrafiu, or count, though the last of these terms Is now wore commonly used to denote one of several distinct matters of complaint comprised in the same declaration.
Eight days after the delivery of the declaration, the time for pleading arrives; the term " pleading " being not only used In the extensive sense mentioned above, but also in the limited sense of the answer, whether consisting of statement or of denial, which is made by the defendant to the declaration. In answering the declaration, the de fendant is not allowed to accumulate his objections both of law and of fact in one defensive pleading. The peculiarity of our system in referring matters of fact to the decision of a jury, and of leaving queatious of law only to the judges, has created a necessity for separa ting the matters of law from those of fact, and of presenting the latter in a shape in which they can be readily understood by persons who are not lawyers by profession. It is to the severe analysis required by this feature of our jurisprudence that the system of pleading is pro bably indebted for its excellence.
If, when called upon to plead, the defendant fails to do so, he is supposed to admit the complaint set out in the declaration, and there fore the court pronounces judgment against him upon his default, or, as it is termed, by nil dicit, those being the words by which the default of a defendant was formerly recorded. lie may, however, decline to
answer the charge contained in the declaration, on the ground that the court has no jurisdiction of the matter ; or that the plaintiff is not entitled to sue, as being an outlaw, foreign enemy, or the like; or that the defendant cannot be sued alone, as being a married woman, or as a party to a contract which forms the subject of the action, that be is sued without his eo-contractor being made a co-defendant in the action. This is called pleadinj in abatement, because the defendaut prays that the court will abate (put down) or quash the proceedings.
The defendant may also pass by these pleas, and admitting, for the present. purpose at least, that the facts stated in the declaration are true, may insist that the facts give the plaintiff no cause of action against him; he may accordingly rest (demur) upon the facts as they appear in the declaration, and call upon the court to give judgment in his favour upon that state of facts. This form of pleading is called a "demurrer." Or, finally, the defendant may snswer the complaint, or, as it is technically called, he may " plead to the action ; " and that in one of two ways : he may deny one or more of the material allega.
tions in the declaration which is necessary to the maintenance of the action : or plead one sweeping denial of the whole declaration, which is called pleading the "general issue;"—which pleas are supposed to "conclude to the country," that is, the defendant in them states his readiness to submit to the decision of a jury (who are called " the country," as contradistinguished from the "court") the truth of the matter of fact asserted in the declaration and denied in the plea. It is the same if the plea asserts a fact denied in the declaration; and in either case the defendant is said to take issue.