Definition
Law French. Literally, "no such record." A plea in which a defendant denies the existence of the record upon which the plaintiff's action is founded. Where a plaintiff brings an action based on a matter of record — most typically a judgment debt — the defendant may respond by asserting that no such record exists as alleged.
The term carries three related but distinct procedural meanings:
1. The plea itself: the defendant's denial that the record exists.
2. The replication: the plaintiff's response to a defendant who has pleaded a matter of record, asserting that no such record supports the defendant's position.
3. The issue: the triable question that arises when either party pleads nul tiel record, which was historically tried by the court itself by inspection of the record rather than by jury.
The third meaning is the most procedurally significant. Because records were deemed conclusive and incapable of being contradicted by parol evidence, the existence or non-existence of a record was a question for the court, not a jury. The court would examine the record directly and determine the issue by inspection.
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Common Confusion
Nul tiel record is sometimes loosely described only as a defendant's plea, but Burrill's entry is more precise: the term applies equally to the plaintiff's replication denying a record pleaded by the defendant, and to the issue that arises from either use. Researchers treating nul tiel record as a purely defensive pleading tool will miss its function on the plaintiff's side.
Separately, nul tiel record should not be conflated with a general denial or a plea of nul debet ("he owes nothing"). Nul debet denies the debt itself; nul tiel record denies the existence of the foundational record without contesting the underlying obligation on its merits.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a term almost entirely confined to common law pleading practice and has no meaningful modern analog in most U.S. jurisdictions, where code pleading and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure replaced the formal system of special pleading. Researchers encountering nul tiel record in historical sources — particularly in reports from English courts or early American state courts through the mid-nineteenth century — should understand it as part of the formal pleading structure governing actions of debt on judgment.
Several research traps are worth flagging:
First, the procedural posture matters. When you see nul tiel record in a case report, identify whether it is functioning as a plea, a replication, or an issue. Each posture places the term at a different stage of litigation and carries different consequences for what the court had to decide.
Second, the trial mechanism is distinctive. Because the issue was tried by the court on inspection of the record — not by jury — cases turning on nul tiel record often lack the evidentiary development that jury issues produce. The court's ruling may be brief and devoid of factual narrative, which can make these cases harder to parse for researchers expecting conventional trial records.
Third, this plea surfaces most frequently in the context of foreign judgments, where the "record" being denied may be the judgment of a court of another jurisdiction. Disputes over whether a foreign court's judgment constituted a true "record" for purposes of this plea generated significant case law in both England and early American courts, and that body of authority is a productive research thread for questions about full faith and credit and the status of foreign judgments.
Fourth, nul tiel record connects directly to the distinction between courts of record and courts not of record — a distinction that was operationally significant in the formal pleading era. Actions founded on proceedings of courts not of record could not be contested by this plea in its traditional form.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The three source dictionaries agree on the core definition — a plea denying the existence of the record — but Burrill's entry is the most analytically complete and is the most useful starting point. Burrill explicitly identifies all three procedural meanings (plea, replication, and issue) and cites Tidd's Practice, which remains a reliable secondary authority for understanding the mechanics of this plea in the English common law tradition.
Black's and Rapalje & Lawrence treat nul tiel record primarily as a defendant's plea in an action of debt on judgment, which reflects the most common context but understates the term's full procedural range. Rapalje & Lawrence's cross-references to RECORD, JUDGMENT, and MITTIMUS are useful navigational pointers within the corpus — particularly the connection to MITTIMUS, which hints at the plea's use in contexts beyond simple judgment debt actions.
None of the three dictionaries addresses the plea's specific role in foreign judgment litigation, where it did significant doctrinal work in early American courts. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries for that research thread will need to extend into treatise literature, particularly on conflict of laws.
The Law French form of the term is stable across all sources. No meaningful divergence exists in the historical record on the core definition, though practice details varied between English and American courts.
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Jurisdictional Note
Nul tiel record is primarily a feature of English common law pleading and early American practice in states that retained common law forms of action. It has no operative role in modern federal practice or in states that have abolished common law pleading forms. Researchers working in Louisiana, which followed civil law traditions, will not encounter this plea in the same context.
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