Definition
Latin: "This he is ready to verify." A formal pleading phrase used in common law practice to signal that a party — typically a defendant — stands ready to prove the truth of a factual matter asserted in the pleadings. The phrase functioned as a verbal offer of proof, signaling to the court that the party did not merely assert a fact but was prepared to establish it through evidence or other available means of verification. It was a conventional close to certain pleas, particularly those introducing new matter, and served a procedural rather than substantive purpose.
Common Confusion
Hoc paratus est verificare is frequently confused with a related but distinct closing formula: et hoc paratus est verificare, meaning "and this he is ready to verify." The distinction is purely formal — the addition of "et" (and) served as a connective when the phrase followed earlier matter in the same pleading. Researchers encountering either form should treat them as functionally equivalent for interpretive purposes. Both should also be distinguished from similiter, the opponent's formal acceptance of an issue for trial, which followed rather than preceded the verification offer.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase appears almost exclusively in historical common law pleading records — writs, pleas, and replication documents from English and early American courts operating under the formal system of common law pleading. Researchers working in pre-code pleading archives, equity records, or early American court files will encounter it as boilerplate closing language in pleas of confession and avoidance, pleas in bar, or special pleas introducing affirmative matter.
The phrase carried no independent evidentiary weight; it was a formality required by the rules of pleading to close a plea properly. Its absence from a plea could, in strict common law practice, render the pleading defective. This means researchers reading older court records should not interpret the phrase as a substantive factual claim or as evidence of the party's actual evidentiary posture — it is procedural scaffolding, not argument.
The phrase disappears from American practice with the adoption of code pleading beginning in the mid-nineteenth century (the Field Code of 1848 in New York being the primary catalyst) and is entirely absent from modern pleading under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Any document containing this phrase almost certainly predates code pleading reforms in the relevant jurisdiction, which is itself useful as a dating and jurisdictional signal when the provenance of a document is uncertain.
Researchers should also note that Latin closing formulas in historical pleadings were often abbreviated by clerks or copyists. Hoc paratus est verificare may appear in truncated or variant spellings in manuscript records, and verification against standard formularies from the period — such as Chitty's Pleading or Stephen's Principles of Pleading — is advisable when the exact phrase matters to interpretation.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides the entry in its entirety as: "Lat. This he is ready to verify." This is a minimal gloss, characteristic of how Latin pleading formulas were treated in legal dictionaries of the era — the phrase was so well understood within formal pleading practice that extended definition was considered unnecessary. Black's does not situate the phrase within the broader architecture of common law pleading, nor does it flag the formula's obsolescence by the time of the edition's publication. Researchers relying solely on Black's will get the translation but miss the procedural context. No significant divergence exists among historical sources on the meaning of this phrase; it was a term of art with a fixed, uncontested function.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase was operative in jurisdictions following English common law pleading rules, including the American colonies and early American states. Its use was effectively terminated jurisdiction by jurisdiction as code pleading was adopted across the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century it had no active procedural role in any American jurisdiction.