Definition
A bill "for fraud" is an original bill in equity practice used to attack and set aside a decree or judgment that was obtained through fraudulent means. The bill asks a court of equity to reopen a concluded proceeding on the ground that the opposing party committed fraud in securing the original outcome — whether through false representations, suppression of evidence, perjury, or other misconduct that corrupted the proceeding itself.
The relief sought is essentially restorative: if the bill succeeds, the parties are returned to the position they occupied before the tainted decree was entered, and the matter may be reheard on honest grounds.
This is a narrow and specific procedural mechanism. It is distinct from a bill of review (which challenges legal error on the face of the record) and from other bills in equity that address fraud in the underlying transaction. A bill for fraud targets the integrity of the judicial proceeding, not merely the transaction that gave rise to it.
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Common Confusion
A bill "for fraud" is easily confused with equity bills that challenge fraud in a contract or conveyance — that is, bills seeking to rescind a deed or agreement on grounds of misrepresentation. The distinction is procedural and jurisdictional: a bill for fraud attacks the decree itself and the conduct that produced it, while a bill to rescind for fraud targets the original transaction between the parties. A researcher encountering "bill for fraud" in equity pleading materials should not conflate it with modern fraud-in-the-inducement or fraud-in-the-factum doctrine, which operates at the contract formation stage rather than at the level of the court proceeding. See the Contracts encyclopedia entry for fraud-in-the-inducement vs. fraud-in-the-factum analysis.
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Core Elements
To sustain a bill for fraud in equity practice, the pleading traditionally required:
1. IDENTIFICATION OF THE ORIGINAL DECREE: The bill must specifically state the decree being challenged and the proceedings that led to it. A general allegation of wrongdoing is insufficient.
2. SPECIFICATION OF THE FRAUD: The bill must identify the ground on which the decree is impeached — the particular fraudulent act, representation, or suppression that corrupted the original proceeding.
3. ORIGINAL BILL STATUS: The bill for fraud is an original bill, not a supplemental or ancillary proceeding. It initiates a new equitable action and may be filed without leave of court, distinguishing it from a bill of review, which in some circumstances required court permission to file.
4. RESTORATIVE PRAYER: The relief requested is restoration of the parties to their pre-decree positions, allowing the underlying dispute to be reconsidered free of the fraud's influence.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-fusion equity materials — particularly chancery records from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — will encounter "bill for fraud" as a distinct pleading category that does not map cleanly onto modern procedural equivalents. Its closest modern analog is a motion or independent action to set aside a judgment for fraud on the court, recognized under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(3) and its state equivalents, but the equity bill was a broader and more elaborate instrument with its own pleading requirements.
Key research traps:
First, Bouvier's entry is abbreviated and references several sources (Story's Equity Pleading, Schoales & Lefroy, Vesey's Chancery Reports) that require access to historical equity treatises to complete the analysis. The fragment in the source material cuts off mid-sentence, which means researchers relying solely on Bouvier will have an incomplete picture of the bill's formal requirements.
Second, the term "for fraud" appears in equity indexes and digests as a headnote category covering multiple bill types. Not every bill indexed "for fraud" is a bill of the specific type described here; some index entries under that heading refer to bills seeking rescission of transactions tainted by fraud. Context and the full pleading must be examined.
Third, the distinction between bills for fraud and bills of review matters for understanding the procedural posture of a case: a bill of review was available only after a final decree and often required leave of court; a bill for fraud could proceed without that leave, making it the more accessible vehicle when the attacking party alleged corruption of the proceeding itself.
For researchers tracing the modern law of fraud on the court, this equity bill is the direct ancestor. The continuity is substantive, not merely formal.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the primary historical source available for this term, and its treatment — though fragmentary in the surviving excerpt — establishes the essential character of the bill: it is an original bill, no leave required, requiring specific pleading of the decree, the proceedings leading to it, and the precise ground of impeachment. Bouvier cross-references Story's Equity Pleading (§ 428 region) and several equity reporters, indicating that the full doctrine was elaborated in equity pleading treatises rather than collected in any single dictionary entry.
What Bouvier does not address — and what historical legal dictionaries generally underserve — is the relationship between the bill for fraud and developing standards for what qualified as sufficient fraud to reopen a decree. Equity courts drew a contested line between fraud that went to the jurisdiction or integrity of the proceeding (actionable by this bill) and mere trial misconduct or newly discovered evidence (addressed by other vehicles). That line is largely invisible in the dictionary literature and must be recovered from chancery decisions and equity treatises directly.
No significant divergence among historical dictionaries is detectable from available sources, as Bouvier appears to be the principal lexicographic treatment of this specific term.
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Jurisdictional Note
The bill for fraud as a standalone equity pleading form is a creature of pre-merger equity practice and is no longer available as such in federal court or in states that have merged law and equity. Its functional successor — the independent action to set aside a judgment for fraud on the court — varies in scope and procedure across jurisdictions. Researchers should consult the specific jurisdiction's rules governing post-judgment relief when translating historical equity doctrine into modern practice.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Defenses — Fraud in the Inducement vs. Fraud in the Factum (The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia)
Check Fraud and Bank Fraud (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
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