Misplaced Pages

#179820

74-541: The enactment of the Rules Enabling Act on June 19, 1934, was a revolutionary moment in the history of civil procedure in the United States . The law repealed the archaic "conformity principle" which had governed actions at law (and only actions at law) in U.S. federal courts for over 140 years; namely, the rule that federal courts should conform their procedure in such actions to that of the courts in

148-500: A discouraging lack of interest. In 1846, Field's ideas gained wider notice with publication of a pamphlet, "The Reorganization of the Judiciary", which influenced that year's New York State Constitutional Convention to report in favor of a codification of the laws. In 1847 he finally had a chance to put his ideas into official form when he was appointed head of a state commission to revise court procedure and practice. The first part of

222-431: A frosty reception from judges and lawyers throughout the United States, as everyone feared that their own favorite local procedure might fall victim to such a standardization process. The final version of the bill was heavily watered down so that it merely required all federal district courts to appoint committees of local attorneys and judges to study the possibility of reorganizing and simplifying their local rules. In

296-492: A good faith attempt to confer with the opponent in advance to avoid unnecessary motion practice, and whether a "separate statement" summarizing the issues to be decided must be concurrently filed. District courts also vary widely in the extent to which local custom is actually codified to any extent in local rules, or in standing orders issued by individual district judges (which may be posted on Web sites or actually filed separately for each case), or simply not codified at all. In

370-413: A hearing date must be reserved in advance, whether the movant even gets a hearing for oral argument (some district courts assume that motions are to be heard unless expressly taken off calendar while in others there is no hearing unless expressly ordered), whether the briefing schedule is calculated from date of filing of motion papers or date of motion hearing, whether the motion papers must show evidence of

444-466: A justification in itself for restrictions on interstate practice. However, Congress has been unable to complete the unification of federal civil procedure in a fashion that would be satisfactory to judges and lawyers in all states. A study of the federal district courts in the mid-1980s found that they had developed a broad range of approaches to filling in the critical gaps in the FRCP. These ranged from

518-433: A new system now called "notice pleading," based on the idea that a complaint should merely give "notice" that the defendant is being sued, and allow the plaintiff to use the machinery of the courts to compel discovery of evidence from the defendant which would help the plaintiff prove his case. And of course, the defendant could compel discovery of evidence from the plaintiff to support his defenses. The FRCP also introduced

592-599: A number of innovations such as Rule 16 pretrial conferences, which gave judges a method for managing caseloads more aggressively and urging parties to reach settlements. Having completed its initial task, the Advisory Committee survived for almost twenty years. In 1941, 1946, and 1948, the Supreme Court adopted the Committee's proposed revisions to the FRCP, but for reasons that were never disclosed,

666-538: A particular procedure was followed just because some (often ancient) decision said so, but none of those decisions were looking at whether the entire procedural system made sense. Because the evolution of the forms of action was severely limited by the Provisions of Oxford (1258), pleaders had to resort to awkward workarounds such as legal fictions which had become quite ludicrous by the 19th century. Legal fictions served only to obscure rather than illuminate what

740-431: A party to a legal action had to bring a collateral proceeding, a bill in equity in aid of discovery, just to obtain essential documents or testimony from the opposing party. Procedure in the early federal courts was notoriously incoherent, and such incoherence persisted for almost 150 years. The Process Act of 1792 authorized the federal courts to write their own procedural rules for everything but actions at law. In

814-408: A settlement. U.S. courts pioneered the concept of the opt-out class action , by which the burden falls on class members to notify the court that they do not wish to be bound by the judgment, as opposed to opt-in class actions, where class members must join into the class. Another unique feature is the so-called American Rule under which parties generally bear their own attorneys' fees (as opposed to

SECTION 10

#1732766125180

888-733: A single local rule in the Middle District of Georgia, to the 34 local rules of the Central District of California (which were loaded with so many subparts that they actually amounted to 434 local rules). The original version of the bill that became the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 included a clause that would have impliedly forced the federal judiciary to develop and adopt a truly comprehensive package of procedural rules that would be uniformly applied in all federal district courts. The draft bill encountered

962-471: A suit in equity (a civil case demanding non-monetary damages). Under the new procedure, rather than having to file separate actions, a plaintiff needed to file only one civil action (or as it is often called today, a lawsuit ). Eventually Field's civil procedure code was, with some changes, adopted in 27 states. It also influenced later procedural reforms in England and several of her colonies (specifically,

1036-415: A uniform system of modern notice pleading in all federal courts. There are exceptions to the types of cases that the FRCP now control but they are few in number and somewhat esoteric (e.g., " prize proceedings in admiralty "). The FRCP drafters were heavily influenced by the elegance of civil procedure in certain code pleading states, particularly California and Minnesota . However, the FRCP went to

1110-401: Is distinct from the rules that govern criminal actions . Like much of American law , civil procedure is not reserved to the federal government in its Constitution . As a result, each state is free to operate its own system of civil procedure independent of her sister states and the federal court system. Early federal and state civil procedure in the United States was rather ad hoc and

1184-503: The English Rule of "loser pays"), though American legislators and courts have carved out numerous exceptions. Note that the following states do not have a single code or set of civil procedure rules for their trial courts: Delaware , Indiana , Maryland , New Hampshire , New Mexico , Rhode Island , and Washington . David Dudley Field II David Dudley Field II (February 13, 1805 – April 13, 1894)

1258-564: The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) on June 3, 1935. Mitchell was appointed as the Advisory Committee's first chairman (a position he would hold until his death in 1955) and Clark was appointed as the Committee's Reporter. The Advisory Committee's initial membership in 1935 included several prominent lawyers and politicians of the era, including George W. Wickersham , Armistead Mason Dobie , George Donworth , and Scott Loftin . Other prominent persons who were appointed later to

1332-573: The Judicature Acts ). However, according to Amalia Kessler , the more important aspect of Field's "code of civil procedure" was not so much the "code" part, but the "civil procedure" part. Before Field, the idea of "procedure" as a unified body of law simply did not exist in common law jurisdictions. Joseph Story 's treatises a generation earlier are a typical example, in that Story, like his contemporaries, treated "pleading" and "practice" as two clearly distinct bodies of law and never used

1406-539: The Supreme Court in 1973. The Rules of Evidence were eventually passed, with substantial changes, as legislation by Congress. Because of Congress's intervention in 1973 and subsequent years, the Act's rulemaking powers granted to the judiciary have been reduced, causing the Act to command less importance in recent years. However, the Act makes it very difficult for litigants to challenge the constitutional validity of

1480-711: The United States Court for China . Frustration with the status quo caused the American Bar Association to launch a nationwide movement for reform of federal civil procedure in 1911. After years of bitter infighting within the American bench and bar, the federal procedural reform movement culminated in the enactment of the Rules Enabling Act on June 19, 1934. The Supreme Court at first took little interest in exercising

1554-684: The cause of action . By 1897, 27 states had enacted versions of the Field Code. As of that same year, common law pleading despite extensive statutory modifications remained the dominant procedure in 13 states, the Territory of New Mexico, and the District of Columbia. And seven more states had not enacted formal "codes of civil procedure", but had enacted "fairly complete statutory systems" which incorporated elements of both code pleading and common law pleading and in general were more analogous to

SECTION 20

#1732766125180

1628-489: The state supreme court or the state bar association. The position taken by these states is that to protect the rights of the citizens of a representative democracy , civil procedure should be directly managed by legislators elected by the people on a frequent basis, not judges who are subject only to relatively infrequent retention elections (California) or direct elections (Illinois and New York). (All three states have strong traditions of popular sovereignty ; they are among

1702-462: The Advisory Committee included George W. Pepper , Samuel Marion Driver , and Maynard Pirsig . The Advisory Committee first prepared two preliminary drafts for its own use, then eventually printed and circulated three drafts nationwide, in May 1936, April 1937, and November 1937. The third report was the final one, which the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed, revised, and adopted on December 20, 1937. There

1776-659: The British National Association for the Promotion of Social Science a revision and codification of the laws of all nations. For an international commission of lawyers he prepared Draft Outlines of an International Code (1872), the submission of which resulted in the organization of the international Association for the Reform and Codification of the Laws of Nations , of which he became president. Field

1850-524: The Commissioner of Practice and Pleadings. In this work he personally prepared almost the whole of the political and civil codes. The commission's penal code is often misattributed to Field but it was actually drafted by William Curtis Noyes , another member of the code commission who was a former prosecutor. The codification, which was completed in February 1865, was adopted only in small part by

1924-527: The Conformity Act of 1872, which directed federal courts to conform their procedure in such actions to the current practice in the states in which they were sitting (i.e., "dynamic conformity"). Federal courts were allowed to continue to develop the federal common law of evidence (most of which was replaced a century later by the Federal Rules of Evidence ). However, allowing federal courts to conform to current state procedure still did not solve

1998-416: The FRCP and its state counterparts (this was also an express position of the federal civil procedure reform movement), is that civil procedure is a judicial function reserved to the judiciary under the rule of separation of powers ; legislatures are often too congested and gridlocked to make timely amendments to civil procedure statutes (as evidenced by the chaos and delays surrounding the statutory adoption of

2072-492: The FRCP for their civil procedure systems, while maintaining the general principle that the legislature should manage civil procedure. For example, the FRCP's liberal discovery rules heavily influenced the California Civil Discovery Act of 1957 as well as its subsequent replacements in 1986 and 2004. Thus, by fixing the most archaic and frustrating parts of their procedural systems, they have obviated

2146-470: The FRCP. The American legal landscape is strewn with procedural reform efforts. There have been innumerable revisions to the FRCP, and to the nation’s state procedural rules, in the eighty years since promulgation of the FRCP. The resulting procedural diversity has been both valued and vilified. Various critics have disavowed the efficacy of procedural reform efforts. They have identified inherent anti-uniformity factors that should be embraced. A consequence of

2220-410: The FRCP. For example, Rhode Island has its own Civil Court Rules of Procedure. Generally, American civil procedure has several notable features, including extensive pretrial discovery , heavy reliance on live testimony obtained at deposition or elicited in front of a jury , and aggressive pretrial "law and motion" practice designed to result in a pretrial disposition (that is, summary judgment ) or

2294-470: The Federal Rules of Evidence); and many legislators are nonlawyers who do not understand the urgent need to constantly revise and improve civil procedure rules. Thus, the development of state statutory civil procedure law is often haphazard and chaotic. Another reason for why many states have not adopted the FRCP is that they have borrowed, by occasional statutory acts, the most innovative parts of

Rules Enabling Act - Misplaced Pages Continue

2368-556: The Federal Rules under the Erie Doctrine . Hanna v. Plumer , 380 U.S. 460, 473 (1965). This United States federal legislation article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Civil procedure in the United States Civil procedure in the United States consists of rules that govern civil actions in the federal , state , and territorial court systems, and

2442-788: The Rev. David Dudley Field I , a Congregational minister and local historian, and Submit Dickenson Field. His brothers included Stephen Johnson Field , a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Cyrus Field , a prominent businessman and creator of the Atlantic Cable , and Rev. Henry Martyn Field , a prominent clergyman and travel writer. He was also the uncle of U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer . He graduated from Williams College in 1825, studied law with Harmanus Bleecker in Albany , and settled in New York City. After his admission to

2516-534: The Supreme Court about revisions to procedural rules. The Judicial Conference then appointed a Standing Committee to handle that task, which in turn appointed an advisory committee for each set of federal procedural rules, including the FRCP. The initial members of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules were appointed in April 1960; since then, that committee has been in charge of drafting revisions to

2590-480: The Supreme Court never adopted the Committee's 1955 revisions, and discharged the Committee instead on October 1, 1956. The ABA and numerous other groups lobbied for some kind of committee to take over the task of maintaining the FRCP and other federal procedural rules. In 1958, Congress amended the act creating the Judicial Conference of the United States so that it would have the power to advise

2664-441: The U.S. Supreme Court), California bought into Field's codification project more than any other state. California first enacted a Practice Act in 1851 influenced by the Field Code, then in 1872 enacted Field's civil procedure, criminal procedure, civil, penal, and political codes as the first four California Codes (California merged Field's penal and criminal procedure codes into a single code). Meanwhile, in 1866, Field proposed to

2738-473: The ability of trial court judges in rural areas to trip up big city lawyers with obscure local rules and forms, and in turn improving the portability of legal services. Even states that declined to adopt the FRCP, like California, also joined the movement towards intrastate uniformity of civil procedure. One surviving legacy of the old Conformity Act is that the FRCP is still vague about certain procedural details. For example, Rules 7, 10, and 11 do not list all

2812-404: The above patchwork of historical imitations and amendments is the countless procedural differences between state and federal courts across the nation. Most practicing lawyers and judges are far too busy to focus on reforming the system where they have learned to function. There is precious little time to devote to individual consideration of whether another judicial system offers a better solution to

2886-549: The bar in 1828, he rapidly won a high position in his profession. He joined the law office of Henry and Robert Sedgwick, of the prominent Sedgwick family , and became a partner in the firm after Robert died. In 1829, Field married Jane Lucinda Hopkins, with whom he had three children: Dudley, Jeanie Lucinda , and Isabella. After his wife's death in 1836, Field remarried twice, first to Harriet Davidson (d. 1864) and second to Mary E. Carr (d. 1874). The eldest child, Dudley Field, followed in his father's footsteps and studied law. He

2960-436: The briefing and arguments of motions, and Rule 83 grants broad authority to district courts to promulgate local rules. This compromise allowed each federal district court to supplement the FRCP by promulgating local rules which track traditional motion practice in their states to the extent compatible with the FRCP. But it also defeated the FRCP's objective of procedural uniformity. While virtually all U.S. lawyers understand

3034-547: The civil procedure in effect at the time those states joined the Union. Unfortunately for the federal courts, state civil procedure law began to diverge dramatically in the mid-19th century. In the 1840s, the law reformer David Dudley Field II launched a movement away from common law pleading and towards what came to be called "code pleading." Common law pleading operated under ad hoc procedures that developed haphazardly through case law —the forms of action . In other words,

Rules Enabling Act - Misplaced Pages Continue

3108-415: The code pleading states. Some of the common law pleading states nominally retained the forms of action but declined to adopt code pleading because they had developed their own workarounds for the deficiencies of the common law. For example, Virginia developed its own unique system of "motion pleading", based on a "motion for judgment" which functions like a pleading. Field is also credited with developing

3182-491: The commission's work, a portion of the code of civil procedure, was reported and enacted by the legislature in 1848. By January 1, 1850, the New York state legislature had enacted the complete Code of Civil Procedure, subsequently known as the Field Code since it was almost entirely Field's work. The new system abolished the distinction in forms of procedure between an action at law (a civil case demanding monetary damages) and

3256-478: The common law tradition, and Livingston's Louisiana Practice Act of 1805. European civil law thus influenced American civil procedure, partially through the intermediary of Louisiana . Livingston helped to prepare criminal and civil codes for Louisiana, and Field's personal papers at Duke University Libraries reveal that he had read Livingston's 1825 report on the Louisiana Civil Code . Field

3330-415: The context of actions at law, the earlier Process Act of 1789 was so poorly written that it forced a federal court sitting in a state to apply the common law rules of pleading and procedure that were in effect in the state at the time it joined the Union, regardless of whether the state had modified or revised its civil procedure system since. In other words, even though a state's common law pleading system

3404-591: The defense team included John Graham and Elihu Root . This first trial ended when the jury could not agree on a verdict. In a second trial in November 1873, Tweed received a sentence of twelve years in prison and a $ 12,750 fine from judge Noah Davis . After 1876, Field returned to the Democratic Party, and from January to March 1877 served out in the United States House of Representatives

3478-410: The documents that should be filed with a motion, nor do they contain a complete set of requirements for how they should be formatted, Rule 6 does not contain a complete motion briefing schedule (apart from the general requirement that a notice of motion and supporting motion papers must be filed and served at least 14 days ahead of the hearing), Rule 78 grants district courts broad discretion in scheduling

3552-432: The early 20th-century reformers was to use the development of new federal procedural rules to facilitate uniformity of civil procedure in the separate states. By 1959, 17 states had adopted versions of the FRCP in part or whole as their civil procedure systems. Today, 35 states have adopted versions of the FRCP to govern civil procedure in their state court systems, although significant modifications were necessary because

3626-494: The end, most but not all federal district courts restructured their local rules to follow a uniform format promulgated by the Judicial Conference of the United States, but they continued to maintain most of their unique local idiosyncrasies. California , Illinois and New York are notable in that almost all of their sui generis civil procedure systems are codified in statutory law, not in rules promulgated by

3700-451: The federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, while state courts have general jurisdiction over innumerable types of matters that are usually beyond the jurisdiction of federal courts (traffic, family, probate, and so on). In supplementing the FRCP to provide a comprehensive set of rules appropriate to state law, several states took advantage of the opportunity to impose intrastate uniformity of civil procedure, thereby cutting down on

3774-433: The federal courts' problems with actions at law, because by the turn of the 20th century, the U.S. was a mix of common law and code pleading states. Even worse, many code pleading states had merged common law and equity procedure into a unified civil procedure system, which directly clashed with the federal courts' preservation of the traditional English division between the two bodies of procedural law. The inevitable result

SECTION 50

#1732766125180

3848-426: The general principles of a FRCP 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss or a FRCP 56 motion for summary judgment, the actual details of making and opposing motions continue to vary dramatically from one federal district court to the next. Variations include things like the formatting of court papers (including typeface, margins, line spacing, line numbers, and whether maximum length should be calculated in words or pages), whether

3922-462: The last situation, out-of-town attorneys and pro se parties are at a severe disadvantage unless the district court's uncodified customs have been expressly documented in legal treatises, which is not always the case for smaller states. Congress and the federal courts have recognized that this flaw in the FRCP drives up the cost of legal services and hinders the ability of lawyers to litigate in federal courts in other states, which in turn has become

3996-451: The minority of U.S. states whose enacting clauses and criminal prosecutions are done in the name of the people, rather than the state.) The other problem with having judges manage civil procedure rules is that they are usually too busy with their regular caseloads to directly draft new or amended rules themselves. As noted above, most of the real work is delegated to appointed advisory committees. The opposite viewpoint, as represented by

4070-431: The need for complete reform, which would also necessitate retraining all their lawyers and judges. Confusingly, Kansas and North Carolina have "Rules of Civil Procedure" which are actually enacted statutes, not rules promulgated by their state supreme courts. A few states have adopted the general principle that civil procedure should be established in court rules, not civil procedure statutes, but have refused to adopt

4144-631: The new powers granted to the Court by the Act. Then in January 1935, Charles Edward Clark , the dean of Yale Law School , published an article arguing that federal procedural reform had to include a full merger of law and equity, as had occurred in many code pleading states. This article in turn inspired U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell to write a letter to Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes in favor of procedural reform. The Supreme Court appointed an Advisory Committee to draft what would become

4218-517: The practice at hand. On their behalf, there are numerous state and federal entities–perhaps no more so than in California–that propose intra-system or single-subject changes from time to time. But there is no ‘‘go to’’ institution with the resources to routinely canvass differences between state and federal procedure within each state. There is no evolving national database that tracks this genre of state and federal variances. An express objective of

4292-501: The state in which they were located. The conformity principle had caused major problems for federal courts that did not actually sit in the United States , such as the United States Court for China . While the courts exercised rulemaking powers granted to them under the Act without Congressional intervention for nearly forty years, Congress refused to allow the Federal Rules of Evidence to go into effect after their approval by

4366-425: The state of New York, but it served as a model upon which many statutory codes throughout the United States were constructed. For example, although Field's civil code was repeatedly rejected by his home state of New York (due in large part to the opposition of James C. Carter to Field's ideas), it was later adopted in large part by the states of California, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, as well as

4440-542: The territory of Guam many years later. (Notably, Idaho largely enacted the contract sections of Field's civil code but declined to enact the tort sections. ) 18 states ultimately enacted part or all of what was widely (though incorrectly) called Field's penal code, including his home state of New York in 1881. Thanks to Field's brother, Stephen (who served in the California State Assembly and as California's fifth Chief Justice before being appointed to

4514-642: The very idea of "civil procedure" in American English , as referring to a single body of law governing the entire lifecycle of a civil action. Before him, an earlier generation of American lawyers like Joseph Story had always conceived of "pleading" and "practice" as two separate but related bodies of procedural law. By the late 19th century, lawyers were becoming very frustrated with having to follow procedures that had been obsolete in their states for decades every time they litigated actions at law in federal courts. In response, Congress finally enacted

SECTION 60

#1732766125180

4588-434: The word "procedure". The Field Code joined together "pleading" and "practice" for the first time under the heading of "procedure" and marked the "invention of procedure as a distinct, coherent category, defined in antithesis to the substantive law". In 1857, Field became chair of another state commission, this time for the systematic codification of all of New York state law except for those portions already reported upon by

4662-428: Was also influenced by criticism of the common law by his law partner Henry Sedgwick, as well as lawyer William Sampson . Field devoted more than 40 years of his life to codification, and he "was by far the most persuasive and articulate advocate of codification in nineteenth-century America." He began by outlining his proposed reforms in pamphlets, professional journal articles, and legislative testimony, but met with

4736-437: Was always constantly evolving through case law , the federal courts in that state were literally frozen in time (a concept now known as "static conformity"). The Process Acts of 1789 and 1792 did not expressly address the problem of what procedural laws to apply in the federal courts in new states that joined the Union after the original Thirteen Colonies. In 1828, Congress enacted a law which stated that such courts would follow

4810-545: Was an American lawyer and law reformer who made major contributions to the development of American civil procedure . His greatest accomplishment was engineering the move away from common law pleading towards code pleading, which culminated in the enactment of the Field Code in 1850 by the state of New York. Field was born in Haddam, Connecticut on February 13, 1805. He was the oldest of the eight sons and two daughters of

4884-468: Was based on traditional common law procedure but with much local variety. There were varying rules that governed different types of civil cases such as "actions" at law or "suits" in equity or in admiralty; these differences grew from the history of "law" and "equity" as separate court systems in English law. Even worse, discovery was generally unavailable in actions at law. In order to obtain discovery,

4958-545: Was confusion and chaos in the federal courts, particularly as interstate commerce escalated with the Second Industrial Revolution and an increasing number of cases between citizens of different states were heard in federal courts under diversity jurisdiction . The glaring deficiencies in the Conformity Act, especially the assumption that a federal court would always sit in a U.S. state, caused severe problems in extraterritorial federal courts such as

5032-492: Was expected to allege the casual loss and finding of, say, a thousand tons of pig-iron ". In contrast, code pleading was supposed to be carefully designed, at least in theory, with the entire lifecycle of a case in mind so that it would be simple, elegant, and logical, and was implemented by the enacting of a "code of civil procedure" by the state legislature. At common law, procedure came first and substance came second; code pleading flipped those priorities around and focused on

5106-545: Was joined by his brothers Stephen and Jonathan. Much of Field's ideas on codification and the civil procedure rules were based on the 1825 Louisiana Code of Procedure. The Louisiana code was drafted by jurists including Edward Livingston , Louis Lislet (1762–1832), and Pierre Derbigny . In turn, the Louisiana code was inspired by French (including the French Code of Civil Procedure of 1806 ), Spanish, and Roman law,

5180-530: Was made a partner in his father's practice in 1854. Jeanie Lucinda married an Antigua-born British imperial civil servant, Anthony Musgrave , and became a promoter of charitable projects in British colonies. After having practiced law for several years, Field became convinced that the common law in America, and particularly in New York state, needed radical changes to unify and simplify its procedure . 1836

5254-736: Was originally an anti-slavery Democrat , and he supported Martin Van Buren in the Free Soil campaign of 1848. He gave his support to the Republican Party in 1856 and to the Lincoln Administration throughout the American Civil War . Field was part of the team of defense counsel that William M. Tweed assembled to defend himself during the first criminal prosecution of Tweed in 1873. Other members of

5328-495: Was particularly devastating for Field: his first wife, youngest child, and one of his brothers all died in the same year. To cope with his grief , he paused his law practice, traveled to Europe for over a year and focused on investigating the courts, procedure, and codes of England, France and other countries. He then returned to the United States and labored to bring about a codification of its common law procedure. Upon returning, he also established his own law firm, in which he

5402-606: Was significant opposition to the new rules in Congress and hearings were held by both House and Senate committees, but the Rules Enabling Act required Congress to affirmatively override the Supreme Court's adoption of rules pursuant to the Act. Congress recessed in June 1938 with neither house having taken a floor vote on the issue, and accordingly, the FRCP automatically went into effect on September 16, 1938. The Rules unified law and equity and replaced common law and code pleading with

5476-431: Was truly at issue between the parties. For example, the traditional form of action for trover was originally intended for finders, keepers situations (i.e., the plaintiff accidentally lost some property, then the defendant found it and wrongfully kept it), but was gradually expanded to many other kinds of improper takings of others' property—which are now known as conversion . Thus, in an action for trover, "a plaintiff

#179820