Definition
A bill of complaint is the initiating pleading filed by a plaintiff (complainant) in a court of equity to commence a suit in chancery. It sets out the complainant's grievance, states the facts upon which relief is sought, and asks the court for specific equitable remedies — such as injunction, specific performance, or an accounting — that a court of law could not or would not provide.
The bill of complaint was the functional equivalent in equity of the declaration or complaint at common law, but it operated under distinct rules, conventions, and vocabulary. It was addressed not to a jury but to the conscience of the chancellor, and it concluded with a prayer for relief specifying what the complainant asked the court to do.
A complete bill of complaint traditionally contained several structural parts: the address to the court, the names of the parties, a narrative statement of facts, a charging part (alleging the defendant's wrongdoing), a confederating part (naming co-defendants), an interrogating part (posing questions the defendant was required to answer under oath), and the prayer for relief, including a prayer for the subpoena compelling the defendant to appear.
---
Common Confusion
BILL OF COMPLAINT vs. COMPLAINT (modern civil pleading): These terms are not interchangeable in historical research. The modern "complaint" under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and equivalent state rules is a merged pleading that works in both law and equity. The bill of complaint was a creature of pure equity practice and carried substantive and procedural requirements that have no direct analog in modern pleading. Researchers encountering a "bill of complaint" in pre-merger records should not assume the procedural rules governing modern complaints apply.
BILL OF COMPLAINT vs. BILL IN EQUITY: These terms are used interchangeably in most sources, including Rapalje & Lawrence. "Bill in equity" is the broader genus; "bill of complaint" specifies the originating pleading as distinct from other bills filed mid-proceeding (such as a bill of revivor or a supplemental bill). Some authorities use "bill of complaint" loosely to cover all original bills, while others reserve it for the specific initiating instrument.
---
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
The chancery tradition recognized numerous subspecies of the bill, each serving a different procedural function:
- Original bill: The standard initiating pleading; the bill of complaint in its classic form.
- Bill of revivor: Filed to revive a suit that had abated, typically due to the death of a party.
- Supplemental bill: Filed to bring new facts or new parties into an existing suit.
- Cross bill: Filed by a defendant against the complainant or co-defendants, raising affirmative claims.
- Bill of interpleader: Filed where a stakeholder faced competing claims and sought the court's direction.
- Bill of discovery: Filed solely to obtain information from the opposing party, without independent relief sought.
- Bill quia timet: Filed to prevent anticipated future harm to the complainant's rights.
Each subtype carried its own pleading requirements and was governed by distinct rules of equity practice.
---
Why It Matters in Research
The bill of complaint is foundational to pre-merger equity practice in both English and American courts. Researchers working in any corpus covering chancery proceedings before the merger of law and equity — which occurred federally in 1938 with the adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and at varying dates in the states — will encounter bills of complaint as the standard originating document.
Several traps await the unprepared researcher. First, the vocabulary is archaic: terms like "confederating part," "charging part," and "interrogating part" describe formal sections of the bill that have no modern equivalents. Second, the bill of complaint required the defendant to answer under oath, which meant defendants in equity could be compelled to provide sworn testimony against their interests before trial — a procedure that differed fundamentally from common law discovery. Third, jurisdiction in equity turned on different rules than jurisdiction at law; a bill of complaint filed in a court that lacked equitable jurisdiction (or where an adequate remedy at law existed) would be dismissed on those grounds alone, not on the merits.
For corpus researchers, bills of complaint appear in chancery court records, equity dockets, and published reports of equity decisions. They are often lengthy documents compared to common law declarations, because equity pleading favored exhaustive fact narrative. When reading reported equity cases, the bill of complaint typically supplies the only detailed statement of the plaintiff's position — the equivalent of what a modern complaint provides — and understanding its structure helps in identifying which facts were formally placed before the court.
Researchers tracing the transition to modern pleading should note that some states maintained separate equity courts and equity procedure well into the twentieth century; the merger date is not uniform, and a document labeled "bill of complaint" in a state court record may post-date federal merger by decades.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define the bill of complaint as "the pleading of the plaintiff in a court of equity," identifying it as the instrument by which the complainant "sets forth the names of the parties, states the facts of the case, charges the defendant, and prays for relief and for process to compel the appearance of the defendant." This definition is accurate but compressed; the actual practice required considerably more structural formality than the entry conveys.
Rapalje & Lawrence correctly distinguish the bill of complaint as an equity pleading from its common law counterpart, though the entry does not detail the sworn-answer requirement or the interrogating part — omissions that matter for researchers working with actual chancery records rather than reported decisions. The entry reflects the standard American treatise understanding of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, when equity practice was still fully operational in most jurisdictions but beginning to be systematized for reform.
What the historical dictionaries generally miss is the practical significance of the bill's interrogating part. In equity, the complainant could frame specific questions within the bill itself, and the defendant was required to answer each question under oath in a sworn answer. This gave the bill of complaint a quasi-discovery function that common law pleading lacked entirely, and it shaped how complainants drafted their bills strategically.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The bill of complaint was the standard originating pleading in English chancery and in American equity courts that modeled themselves on English practice. Federal equity procedure was unified and governed by the Equity Rules (in various iterations) until the 1938 merger. State equity practice varied: some states had separate chancery courts with distinct procedures; others folded equity jurisdiction into courts of general jurisdiction while retaining equity pleading forms. Researchers working in Delaware, New Jersey, or South Carolina — states with historically strong separate chancery traditions — will find bills of complaint in active use well into the twentieth century.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia: Federal Question Jurisdiction — 28 USC 1331 and the Well-Pleaded Complaint Rule (for the modern pleading framework that replaced equity practice at the federal level and the jurisdictional doctrines that now govern originating pleadings).
---