Definition
A plea in an action brought to enforce an arbitration award, by which the defendant denies that any valid award was ever made. The plea operates as a traverse — a direct denial — of the plaintiff's allegation that an arbitrator or arbitrators issued a binding determination. Rather than challenging the merits or validity of an alleged award, the plea of no award contests the foundational fact of the award's existence altogether.
In the common law pleading system, when a plaintiff sued to compel performance of an arbitration award, the defendant had to respond with a recognized plea. "No award" was the proper form for contesting whether an award was actually rendered. It is distinct from pleas that admit an award existed but challenge its scope, the arbitrator's authority, or the defendant's compliance.
Common Confusion
No award should not be confused with pleas that attack the validity or legality of an award — for example, that the arbitrators exceeded their authority, that the submission was void, or that the award was procured by fraud. Those pleas concede that something purporting to be an award exists; no award denies that any award came into being at all. The distinction mattered under strict common law pleading rules because the wrong plea could result in judgment against the pleader even if the underlying facts supported a defense.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a relic of common law pleading practice and will appear almost exclusively in older case reporters and pleading manuals, roughly pre-twentieth century. Researchers encountering it in historical sources should recognize it as a technical pleading term with a precise procedural function — not a substantive defense on the merits of the underlying arbitration dispute.
Because arbitration enforcement actions were governed by common law forms of action before the rise of modern arbitration statutes (such as the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 and its state counterparts), the procedural vocabulary surrounding awards — including this plea — dropped out of common use as code pleading and then notice pleading replaced the common law forms. A modern practitioner challenging the existence of an award would simply deny the relevant allegation in the complaint; the named plea is no longer required or used.
Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should watch for the term in pleading treatises, early state court decisions, and form books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Rapalje & Lawrence entry contains a notable transcription irregularity — the definition appears to run together with a separate entry for the term "nisi" — and should be read with caution. The operative substance from that source aligns with Black's and Bouvier's: the plea is a traverse to an action on an award.
State reporters from Alabama, Vermont, and New York (the jurisdictions cited by Bouvier and Rapalje & Lawrence) are likely to contain early examples of the plea in action.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries agree on the core definition: no award is the proper plea by which a defendant traverses the allegation that an award was made in an action on an award. The entries in Black's (both editions) and Bouvier are functionally identical, differing only in minor phrasing. Rapalje & Lawrence concurs in substance but, as noted, the printed entry appears corrupted or merged with adjacent material, likely a typesetting artifact.
None of the historical dictionaries elaborate on the procedural mechanics of how the plea was joined, what evidence was required to support it, or how courts handled it at trial. For that level of detail, researchers should consult period pleading treatises such as Chitty on Pleading or Gould's Treatise on the Principles of Pleading, which address arbitration-related pleadings with greater granularity.
The historical sources are silent on any jurisdictional variation in the form or availability of the plea, suggesting it was treated as a uniform feature of common law pleading rather than a creature of local practice.
Jurisdictional Note
The plea of no award was a common law form and has no direct modern equivalent in any U.S. jurisdiction. Under contemporary procedural rules, the same factual denial is accomplished through a general or specific denial in an answer. Researchers should not expect to find the term in post-twentieth-century case law except in historical or academic discussions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
remedies_66: Prejudgment Interest — Availability, Rate, and Discretionary vs. Mandatory Award (The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia)