Definition
Nul tort (from the Law French meaning "no wrong") is a plea of the general issue in a real action by which the defendant denies having committed any wrong against the plaintiff. By entering this plea, the defendant puts the plaintiff to proof of the entire claim, forcing the issue of whether any tortious act or dispossession occurred at all. It functioned as the real-action equivalent of the general denial in modern civil procedure.
Common Confusion
Nul tort and nul disseisin are the two principal general issue pleas in real actions, and they are frequently mentioned together or confused. Nul disseisin is the specific general issue plea in the assize of novel disseisin — the action to recover land from which the plaintiff had been wrongfully dispossessed. Nul tort is the broader plea available in real actions generally, denying any wrong whatsoever. Burrill's cross-reference to nul disseisin signals the connection; researchers should treat them as distinct pleas adapted to different procedural vehicles, not as synonyms.
Why It Matters in Research
Nul tort belongs to the now-largely-extinct procedural world of real actions — the common law forms of action for the recovery of land and other freehold interests. Researchers working in historical property disputes, land title litigation, or early common law pleading will encounter this plea in records from the English common law courts and in early American state courts before the forms of action were abolished.
Several navigational points matter here. First, nul tort is closely paired with nul disseisin, and historical sources treat them almost interchangeably in certain contexts; careless transcription in older reports sometimes conflates them. Understanding which plea applied depended on the specific real action brought. Second, because real actions were abolished in England by the Real Property Limitation Act 1833 and subsequently by the Common Law Procedure Act 1852, and were abolished or fell into disuse in most American states during the nineteenth century through code pleading reforms, nul tort will appear almost exclusively in materials predating those reforms. A researcher finding a nul tort plea in a nineteenth-century American case is almost certainly looking at a pre-code jurisdiction or at a transitional period. Third, Blackstone's treatment at 3 Bl. Com. 305 — cited by Burrill — is the most useful explanatory anchor for understanding how this plea functioned in practice within the architecture of real action pleading.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's agree on the essentials: nul tort is a general issue plea in a real action denying the commission of any wrong. Burrill adds the Law French gloss ("no wrong") and the critical Blackstone citation, making his entry the more useful starting point for historical context. Neither entry elaborates on the procedural mechanics in detail — both assume the reader's familiarity with real action pleading generally. What neither source addresses is the plea's disappearance from practice; both dictionaries treat it descriptively without flagging its obsolescence, which is a gap researchers should note. Blackstone's Commentaries remain the primary explanatory source for the operation of nul tort within the broader system of real action pleading, including how the plea differed in function from other general issue pleas available in personal actions.
Jurisdictional Note
Nul tort was a feature of English common law real action pleading and was carried into early American practice in jurisdictions following the common law forms of action. Its practical relevance is confined to pre-code pleading periods. Jurisdictions that adopted the Field Code or equivalent civil procedure reforms eliminated the forms of action — and with them, pleas like nul tort — replacing them with general denial under a unified civil procedure.