Definition
Ne unques son receiver (Law French: "never was his receiver") is a plea in an action of account render by which the defendant denies that he ever stood in the relationship of receiver to the plaintiff. It is the general denial specific to that form of action — the defendant's assertion that no accountability ever arose because no receivership, agency, or fiduciary capacity was ever established between the parties.
The plea is negative in character: it does not confess and avoid, but directly traverses the foundational allegation of the plaintiff's writ. If sustained, it defeats the action entirely, since without a receiver-plaintiff relationship there is no basis for compelling an accounting.
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Common Confusion
Ne unques son receiver is sometimes loosely described as a denial that the defendant ever "received" the plaintiff's property. That framing is imprecise. The plea denies the status — the legal relationship of receiver or accountant — not merely the physical receipt of goods or money. A defendant might acknowledge receiving specific items while still pleading ne unques son receiver if no recognized legal accountability attached to that receipt. The distinction matters because the action of account render required proof of a relationship giving rise to a duty to account (guardian, bailiff, receiver properly so called), not merely proof of a transfer.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term will appear only in materials touching common law pleading and the old action of account or account render — a largely obsolete form of action superseded in equity by bills for accounting and later by modern discovery and fiduciary litigation. Researchers encountering it are almost certainly working in:
1. Historical pleading manuals and precedent books from the seventeenth through early nineteenth centuries.
2. English Year Books and abridgments, particularly Viner's Abridgment (the source cited in all three dictionary entries here).
3. Early American common law cases from jurisdictions that preserved common law forms of action into the nineteenth century.
The action of account render itself had largely withered by the time American legal dictionaries were being compiled, which is why dictionary entries for this plea are brief and uniform — there was little live controversy to document. Researchers should not expect nuanced case law development in American sources. The English abridgments, particularly Viner and Comyns, are the primary analytical resources.
The plea should be distinguished from the companion plea ne unques executor (never was executor), which served an analogous function in actions against executors. Researchers working in this area may encounter both and should not conflate them.
One trap in historical sources: Bouvier describes the plea as one by which the defendant "affirms" he never was receiver, while Black's describes it as a "denial." This is a distinction without practical difference — both convey a traverse of the plaintiff's allegation — but the variation in phrasing across sources may momentarily confuse readers expecting terminological consistency.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition and all cite the same primary authority: 12 Viner's Abridgment 183. The uniformity signals that by the time these dictionaries were compiled, this was settled historical material rather than a living doctrinal question.
The only notable divergence is Bouvier's characterization of the plea as an "affirmation" rather than a denial, which Black's (both editions) frames as a denial. Substantively, both are correct: in pleading theory, a traverse is formally a denial, but in common usage it can be described as the defendant's affirmative assertion of the negative fact. Neither formulation is wrong; Bouvier simply chose the less technical framing.
None of the three sources elaborate on the procedural consequences of the plea, the burden of proof, or how issues joined on this plea were tried. For that level of detail, researchers must go to Viner directly or consult pleading treatises such as Gould's or Stephen's works on common law pleading.
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Jurisdictional Note
Ne unques son receiver belongs to the English common law tradition of forms of action and has no surviving procedural relevance in modern American or English litigation. It may retain historical significance in jurisdictions that abolished the forms of action relatively late, and in any research context requiring reconstruction of the legal posture of pre-abolition cases.
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