Excerpt from A Summary of Equity Pleading The exception stated the legal nature of the defence in the same brief manner that the libel stated the plaintiff 's case, and it was always consistent with the libel, i.e., it was always what a common-law lawyer would call a plea in confession and avoidance. The replication bore the same relation to the exception which the exception did to the libel, i.e., it set up matter which, if true, would destroy the exception without denying its truth. All the subsequent pleadings were Of the same character, each bearing the same relation to the one immediately preceding which the latter bore to the one next preceding. When the party whose turn it was to plead could allege no matter which would destroy the last pleading without denying its truth, the plead ings terminated. 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.

To a legal expert the summary of Equity Pleading is the best exhibition of the author's great powers of historic insight, acute analysis, original, sagacious generalization & vigorous terse expression. Had the English equity judges of the seventeenth & eighteenth centuries been familiar with the historical development of equity pleading, as described by Langdell, suitors would have been saved from a mass of costly litigation.