Definition
Nullum fegerunt arbitrium (Law Latin: "they made no award") is a plea in pleading by which a defendant denies that any arbitration award was made against them. The plea directly traverses the claimant's allegation that the parties submitted a dispute to arbitration and that an award issued from that proceeding. It puts the existence of the award itself in issue, not merely its validity or enforceability.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in pre-modern common law pleading practice and will surface in older English and early American case law and pleading manuals rather than in modern procedural materials. Researchers encountering the term should recognize it as belonging to the formal system of common law special pleading, in which precise Latin names attached to each plea corresponding to the specific allegation being denied or confessed and avoided.
The plea is the counterpart to an action of debt or assumpsit founded on an arbitration award. Where a plaintiff declared that defendants had submitted to arbitration and that an award was duly made, the defendant could plead nullum fegerunt arbitrium — denying the existence of the award — rather than pleading a substantive defense to it. The distinction mattered procedurally: this plea joined an issue of fact (was there an award?) rather than a question of law.
Researchers working in early American reports or in English common law sources should be alert to the distinction between this plea and related pleas going to the validity of the submission agreement itself or to the regularity of the arbitral proceedings. Conflation of these distinct pleas is easy in secondary sources.
Because this plea belongs to the era of formal common law pleading, it largely disappeared from practice with the adoption of code pleading in American jurisdictions beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and with the development of modern civil procedure. It will not appear in modern procedural codes or rules. Its relevance today is historical and contextual.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) identifies nullum fegerunt arbitrium as a Law Latin pleading term and describes it as "the name of a plea," without elaborating on its substantive content or procedural mechanics. The entry is a bare identification rather than a developed definition, which is characteristic of the Supplemental volume's treatment of pleading terms that had already receded from active practice by Black's own time.
Historical pleading treatises — Chitty's Treatise on Pleading and Stephen's Principles of Pleading being the most authoritative — provide the fuller procedural context that Black's does not. The plea fits within the category of pleas in bar that amount to a direct traverse, denying the factual foundation of the plaintiff's cause of action rather than offering an affirmative defense.
Historical sources do not appear to diverge on the meaning of the term. The sparse treatment in dictionary sources reflects the plea's relatively narrow and technical function rather than any genuine ambiguity about its content.
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Jurisdictional Note
The plea belongs to English common law pleading practice and was carried into early American jurisdictions that followed common law forms. It has no modern procedural equivalent in any U.S. jurisdiction. Researchers dealing with English sources should consult English pleading treatises; researchers in American sources will find the plea only in pre-code era materials.
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