Definition
Cassetur billa (Latin: "that the bill be quashed") is a formal procedural term from common law pleading with two distinct applications:
1. As a judgment: The form of judgment entered for the defendant on a successful plea in abatement, where the plaintiff's action was commenced by bill (billa). The court's ruling that the plaintiff's bill be quashed effectively terminated the action without a decision on the merits, leaving the plaintiff free to recommence the suit in proper form.
2. As a plaintiff's entry: The form of entry made by a plaintiff on the record following a plea in abatement, when the plaintiff concluded that the plea could not be confessed and avoided, traversed, or demurred to. By voluntarily entering cassetur billa, the plaintiff conceded the abatement and abandoned the current bill rather than risk an adverse judgment, preserving the ability to re-file.
In both uses, the term operates within the now-obsolete system of common law pleading and the writ and bill system of initiating civil actions. It is the bill-action counterpart to cassetur breve, which served the same function where the action was commenced by writ rather than bill.
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Common Confusion
CASSETUR BILLA vs. CASSETUR BREVE: These two terms are parallel in function but differ in the procedural vehicle to which they apply. Cassetur billa applies when the action was commenced by bill; cassetur breve applies when commenced by writ. Historical sources sometimes use the terms interchangeably or without clearly distinguishing the procedural context. Researchers encountering either term in older pleading records should first determine how the underlying action was initiated before assuming the terms are identical in application.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost entirely to the pre-reform common law pleading system and will appear in English and early American legal records predating the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century — the English Common Law Procedure Acts of 1852 and 1854 and, in the United States, the Field Code of 1848 and subsequent code pleading reforms. After those reforms abolished the writ and bill system and the formal plea in abatement structure that gave cassetur billa its context, the term ceased to have operational significance.
Researchers working in colonial American court records, early state court archives, or English common law materials will encounter this term most frequently in the context of abatement practice. It signals that a plaintiff either lost on a plea in abatement or chose to withdraw the bill voluntarily rather than contest the plea. Either way, the entry does not resolve the underlying dispute on the merits.
A key research trap: finding cassetur billa in a record does not mean the plaintiff lost the underlying case permanently. Because abatement goes to form rather than substance, plaintiffs often immediately re-filed in corrected form. Searching for subsequent filings by the same parties is essential to understanding the full procedural history.
The term also appears in treatises on common law pleading as a teaching example of how the plea in abatement functioned — Blackstone, Chitty, and Stephen on Pleading all discuss the plea in abatement framework within which cassetur billa operated. Researchers using those treatises will encounter the term as part of the theoretical exposition of the abatement system rather than in live records.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both the first and second editions of Black's Law Dictionary carry nearly identical entries, indicating that the definition was settled and uncontroversial by the time Black compiled the dictionary. Both editions cite Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Comm. 303) and Stephen's Pleading (pp. 128, 131) as the primary authorities, which reflects the term's grounding in the classical common law pleading literature rather than in ongoing judicial development.
The entries in both editions capture the dual application — judgment for defendant and voluntary plaintiff's entry — though the text appears truncated in the available source material at the point of elaborating the plaintiff's entry. The substance, however, is consistent with the broader pleading literature: the plaintiff's cassetur billa entry was a tactical concession, not a judicial defeat, and carried different consequences than a judgment entered against the plaintiff by the court.
Neither edition of Black's addresses the term's disappearance from practice following procedural reforms, which is typical of dictionaries compiled during or shortly after the transition period. Researchers should not infer from Black's treatment that the term remained in active use at the time of publication.
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Jurisdictional Note
Cassetur billa is a term of English common law procedure. American jurisdictions that adopted common law pleading used the term in early practice, but its relevance was extinguished jurisdiction by jurisdiction as code pleading was adopted across the states throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. It retains no operational significance in any modern American or English procedural system.
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