Amendment and Aider of Pleadings

Abstract

Amendments of pleadings at the early common law were rather liberally allowed. In ancient times, when the pleadings were by word of mouth, the parties were permitted to correct them during the oral altercation. Holdsworth states that "a survival of the old idea that a pleader's words were not binding till avowed by his client no doubt made it the more possible to treat pleas as capable of amendment till one was reached by which counsel would abide." But by the 14th and 15th centuries, as oral pleadings were superseded by written pleadings and formalism increased, abuses grew up and cases were constantly thrown out of court and judgments arrested and reversed for errors of form. It became necessary for Parliament to provide a remedy, and this it attempted to do by a series of statutes, called Statutes of Jeofails andAmendments.