Edward W. Hinton
Published: 2015-06-29
Total Pages: 704
Get eBook
Excerpt from Selection of Cases on the Law of Pleading: Under Modern Codes, Collected and Annotated Toward the close of the eighteenth century the courts began to recognize that the later development of the common law pleading was not satisfactory. The ancient theory of special pleading leading to a single clear-cut issue, upon which both parties came prepared for trial, had been displaced by the growth of the general issue, until, in a majority of the actions, the formal issue made by the pleadings gave little or no information as to the real issues which would be disclosed by the evidence. In England an attempt was made to improve the system of pleading by the adoption of the Hilary rules in 1834, but without marked success. The common law procedure act did not remove the objections, and dissatisfaction continued until tho old system was finally supplanted by rules of court under the Judicature Act. In the United States the same unsatisfactory conditions prevailed in the actions at law. It was also becoming more apparent that the pleading in chancery was unduly complicated and prolix, and that the cumbersome scheme for discovery, which was largely responsible for the peculiar features of that system, had largely outlived its usefulness. Agitation for reform in New York led to a proposal to unify the two systems of pleading, which was finally embodied in the Field Code of 1848, whose provisions were copied, in substance at least, in nearly all the later codes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.