Definition
"Et hoc paratus est verificare" is a Latin phrase meaning "and this he is prepared to verify." It was the formal closing formula used at the end of a plea in confession and avoidance in common law pleading. By appending this phrase, the defendant signaled that he was ready to prove the new affirmative matter he had alleged — matter that, if established, would defeat or limit the plaintiff's claim even though the defendant had effectively admitted the underlying facts as stated.
Common Confusion
"Et hoc paratus est verificare" is sometimes confused with the related closing formula "et de hoc ponit se super patriam" ("and of this he puts himself upon the country"), which concluded a plea of the general issue or traverse rather than a plea in confession and avoidance. The distinction matters: the traverse formula ends by submitting the disputed fact to a jury, while et hoc paratus est verificare ends by asserting the defendant's readiness to prove affirmative new matter. The two formulas thus mark fundamentally different pleading postures — denial versus confession-and-avoidance — and choosing the wrong conclusion was a pleading defect under strict common law rules.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering this phrase in historical pleading records, reported cases, or treatises should read it as a structural signal, not mere ceremony. Its presence tells you immediately that the defendant's plea is a confession and avoidance — the defendant is not denying the plaintiff's facts but is instead introducing new matter (release, payment, justification, accord and satisfaction, etc.) to defeat the action. This has direct implications for what issues were actually in dispute and what the court was asked to decide.
The phrase essentially disappeared from American practice with the adoption of code pleading in the mid-nineteenth century and vanished further under notice pleading regimes modeled on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938). In pre-code sources — English Year Books, early American reports, Blackstone, Chitty on Pleading — the formula appears routinely and is load-bearing. In post-code sources, it appears only in historical discussion or as a relic in jurisdictions that retained common law pleading forms longer than others.
Trap for researchers: the word "verify" here does not mean what modern readers expect. It does not mean authentication or sworn attestation in the modern document-management sense. It means the defendant's formal declaration of willingness to prove his averments — a procedural commitment within the pleading itself, not an evidentiary act.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary American authority for this phrase and provides the essential gloss: the formula concludes a plea "in confession and avoidance," meaning the defendant has confessed all the plaintiff set forth and has pleaded new matter in avoidance. Bouvier cites 1 Salk. 2 (Salkeld's Reports), an early English authority, situating the phrase firmly in the classical common law pleading tradition.
Bouvier's entry is brief but accurate. What it does not supply — and what researchers should note — is any discussion of the formula's procedural consequences if omitted or altered, or its relationship to the broader architecture of common law pleading. For that, Chitty's Treatise on Pleading and the relevant volumes of Stephen's Principles of Pleading are the standard supplements. The formula is treated as essentially mandatory in those sources: a plea in confession and avoidance lacking the proper conclusion was technically defective and subject to demurrer.
No meaningful divergence among historical sources on the core meaning. The phrase was stable and well-understood within the system for which it was designed.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is exclusively a product of common law pleading and has no operative role in any modern American jurisdiction. It survives only as a historical artifact in English and early American legal materials. Researchers working in jurisdictions that adopted code pleading early (New York, 1848, as the model) will find the formula absent from reported cases shortly after mid-century.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Pleading (Common Law Forms); Confession and Avoidance