Definition
In Georgia procedure, a **fast bill of exceptions** is an accelerated appellate mechanism available in injunction suits and similar equity cases, designed to bring a matter before a reviewing court with great expedition. The bill must be certified within twenty days from the rendering of the decision complained of. The term "fast" here is used in its ordinary sense of speed or rapidity, but it carries specific procedural consequences that distinguish it from an ordinary bill of exceptions, including compressed timelines and limited application to designated case types.
Separately, Bouvier's records a judicial use of "fast" in the plain descriptive sense — moving rapidly; quick in motion — in the context of factual characterizations appearing in reported decisions, rather than as a technical legal term of art.
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Common Language
**Modern common usage (Wiktionary):** A train that calls at only some stations it passes between its origin and destination, typically just the principal stations.
**Historical common usage (Webster's 1913):** To abstain from food; to omit to take nourishment in whole or in part; to practice abstinence as a religious exercise or duty.
The gap between common usage and the Georgia procedural term is significant. Neither the religious-abstinence sense nor the transportation sense has any bearing on the legal meaning. A researcher encountering "fast" in a Georgia equity record should recognize it immediately as a procedural designation governing appellate timing, not a descriptive adjective or a reference to fasting or transit.
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Common Confusion
"Fast" as a standalone adjective in legal documents — meaning rapid, swift, or speedy — is not synonymous with the procedural term "fast bill of exceptions." Courts and commentators occasionally used "fast" loosely to describe expedited proceedings more generally, but the term of art in Georgia practice refers to a specific procedural instrument with defined certification requirements. Do not read every use of "fast" in historical Georgia records as invoking this mechanism.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a Georgia procedural artifact of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Researchers working in Georgia appellate records, equity court files, or injunction litigation from that era will encounter "fast bill of exceptions" as a distinct procedural category that governed the pace and form of appellate review. The twenty-day certification requirement was a hard deadline, and failure to comply would have defeated the bill's purpose entirely — making the timeline a critical fact when reconstructing whether an appeal was properly preserved.
The term does not appear to have migrated into federal practice or other state systems in any standardized way. Researchers searching the Law Mind corpus for "fast" without contextual awareness risk confusing this procedural label with ordinary descriptive language. Keyword searches should be paired with "bill of exceptions" or "injunction" to isolate the procedural usage.
Historical sources are thin on this term. Anderson's entry indexed under FAST does not address it at all — the relevant portion of Anderson's reproduced here concerns Family Bible evidence, a product of an indexing artifact rather than a substantive definition. Researchers should not rely on Anderson's for this term.
Bouvier's entry, while sparse, confirms that "fast" appeared in reported decisions as a factual descriptor without legal significance, which underscores the need to distinguish context carefully.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (both the first and second editions) treats "fast bill of exceptions" consistently: it is available in injunction suits and similar cases, it must be certified within twenty days of the decision, and its purpose is expedited appellate review. Both editions cite Sewell v. Edmonston, 66 Ga. 353, as the primary authority. The definitions are substantively identical across editions, suggesting this was a settled, narrow term with little doctrinal evolution between editions.
Bouvier's entry adds only that "fast" in judicial usage means moving rapidly or quickly, citing 50 S.W. 239. This is a definition of the adjective in its ordinary sense and does not bear on the procedural term. It may have been included to support interpretation of the word's plain meaning in factual contexts.
Anderson's provides no relevant material on this term despite its inclusion in the source set; the reproduced text addresses an unrelated entry. This is a research caution: historical dictionary compilations sometimes index terms inconsistently, and apparent entries may reflect alphabetical proximity rather than substantive coverage.
No historical dictionary source addresses how "fast" bills of exceptions interacted with ordinary bills of exceptions procedurally, or what "similar cases" beyond injunction suits qualified. Researchers needing that granularity must look to Georgia appellate decisions and practice manuals of the period.
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Jurisdictional Note
The procedural term "fast bill of exceptions" is specific to Georgia practice under the historical bill-of-exceptions regime. Bills of exceptions as a procedural mechanism have been largely abolished in modern appellate practice; researchers should treat this term as governing historical Georgia litigation only.
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