Year: 1878

A commission of emineat lawyers, with Judge Seymour at it's head, was appointed at the last session of our legislature to inquire into the feasibility of simplifying our code of legal procedure. They have prepared report proposing the adoption of the simpler mode of pleading long ago adopted in New York, and since incorporated into the legal systems of nearly half the States of the Union. The Commission give the following reasons for the proposed change:

 The various forms of civil actions are still retained by us, among which the suitor must at his peril choose the right one, for mistake in the form of action may be fatal to the most righteous cause. We also still retain the cid English practice of a Court of Equity, distinct from Court of Law, both. indeed with us presided over by the same Judge, but the one Court pursuing a mode of practice wholly unlike the other, and each adopting code of laws peculiar to itself and unlike the code of the other. The suitor is often embar rassed with the inquiry to which of these Courts he shall resort, and if he happens to find himself in the wrong Court however just his cause may be, he is dismissed with costs. and obliged to begin again, after years, perhaps. of labor and expense spent in vain.

 In view of these facts, 1t cannot with truth be said that the means of access to our tribu- nals or justice are easy or plain. It may be conceded that in & large mass of the cases which occur in practice there is nc serious difficulty. We have become SO familiar. with our system that very careful and learned lawyer will not often make mistake, either in the appropriate action or the proper court but the most careful and most learned are sometimes in doubt, and the grounds upon which the choice of remedies depends are often sc06scure and uncertain, as to leave the highest skill at fault.

 Upon careful consideration of the matter we have agreed to recommend two radical changes in our practice:

 1st To abolish IWith nertair eyoopt;ansl the various forms of civil actions, and allow the suitOr to come into Court with simple complaint, stating in plain language his real grievance.

 2d. To permit the concurrent exercise of law and equity by one and the same Court in one and the same course of procedure

 The division of courts into those of law and equity is peculiarity of English jurispru- dence, incidental to it's early development, and not at all the result of a deliberate approval of the separation as wise and necessary. No other European system of law retains such a distinction and in 1878 it was abolished in England itself.

 The Commission addressed letters of inuui- " to the Chief Justices in the various states that use the simpler forms of procedure; and, with single exception, they pronounced the new system success. We believe that none of the States which have adopted this new system have ever restored the old one. We imagine that there will be little objection to it's adoption in this state. At first, no doubt, there will be difficulties and uncertainties among the lawyers acquainted with the old system and unused to the new. This state will not be obliged, however, as was the case in New York, to build up an edifce of pre- cedents, defining and Illustrating the new law of pleading. The decisions of thirty two states, reaching back in some of them for a quarter of century, have done that work to a great extent for us

 We hope that our result of the new system will be to introduce little more certainty into the defendants ''plea," known under the new plan as an answer" Now, the peader usually offers the simple denial known as ''the general issue" and throws his real defence into ''notice," often incoherent and faulty to the last degree, but which is open to no reply by way of ''demurrer," or replication" Indeed the trial of cases will be materially shortened by any system which brings the pIeadings to distinct issue, or issues.