Definition
Nul wast fait (Law French: "no waste was done") is the general issue plea in an action of waste. When a defendant in a waste action wished to deny the fundamental allegation — that waste had been committed on the land — this was the proper pleading response. By pleading nul wast fait, the defendant put in issue the entire basis of the plaintiff's claim, forcing the plaintiff to prove that waste had in fact occurred.
Common Confusion
Researchers should not conflate nul wast fait with the general issue pleas of other real actions. The common law system of pleading required specific general issue formulas for specific actions — what served as a general denial in one action did not serve in another. Nul wast fait is confined to the action of waste. It should also be distinguished from pleas going to title or possession in other real property proceedings, which carried their own Law French formulas.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern common law pleading materials. Researchers will encounter it in older English treatises on real actions and in materials covering the forms of pleading before the general abolition of the forms of action. Because actions of waste themselves fell into disuse following nineteenth-century procedural reforms — particularly the shift from the old forms of action to code pleading — nul wast fait is effectively a fossil term. It has no operative modern equivalent as a formal plea.
Researchers approaching historical property disputes, particularly those involving landlord-tenant relationships or life tenancies, should be alert to the connection between this plea and the underlying action. The plea is specific to waste as a cause of action; it cannot be generalized to other real property actions. Confusion between the various general issue pleas in different real actions is a common hazard in older sources. The plea signals the nature of the underlying action as much as anything in the record.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the essential account: nul wast fait is "the general issue in an action of waste," citing Roscoe's Real Actions and Coke on Littleton. The entry is brief because the term is structurally simple — it is a plea of traverse, nothing more elaborate than a denial dressed in Law French form.
Coke on Littleton (283a), cited by Burrill, remains the authoritative classical source. Roscoe's Real Actions provided the procedural context in which practitioners of the early nineteenth century would have encountered the term before real actions were substantially swept away by reform legislation.
Historical dictionaries uniformly treat this as an entry of historical record rather than living practice. None provide meaningful divergence in their accounts; the term is too precise and too narrow for interpretive disagreement to have developed.
Jurisdictional Note
This plea is a product of English common law pleading and was operative in American jurisdictions that received the common law forms of action prior to procedural reform. Its appearance in American legal materials is largely confined to the pre-code era. No modern jurisdiction maintains the form.