Definition
An original bill is a foundational concept in equity pleading with two distinct historical meanings:
1. In equity pleading (primary meaning): A bill filed to commence a new suit in a court of equity, addressing a matter not previously litigated before the same court by the same parties standing in the same interests. It is the initiating pleading of a chancery proceeding — the equity court's functional equivalent of a complaint at common law. An original bill stands on its own; it does not depend on, supplement, or arise out of a prior suit. All equity proceedings initiated by private parties (as opposed to matters of state concern, which were commenced by information) began with an original bill.
2. In old English common law practice (secondary meaning): The ancient mode of commencing an action in the English Court of King's Bench. Before the formalization of writs and standardized pleading procedures, a bill filed directly with the King's Bench served as the originating document for certain actions. This usage is archaic and has no surviving procedural application.
Common Confusion
ORIGINAL BILL vs. ANCILLARY BILLS: The original bill is defined partly by what it is not. A court of equity recognized several categories of bills that were not original — bills of review, supplemental bills, cross-bills, and bills of interpleader among them. These ancillary bills depended on or arose out of existing proceedings. The original bill was the initiating instrument; ancillary bills were responses to, or continuations of, suits already underway. Researchers encountering the term "original bill" in chancery records must confirm they are looking at the initiating pleading and not one of its ancillary relatives, which were sometimes loosely described in period sources.
ORIGINAL BILL vs. INFORMATION: In chancery practice, proceedings touching the interests of the state or persons under its protection — such as charities, infants, or the Crown — were commenced by information, not by original bill. The original bill was the vehicle for private party litigation. This distinction, clear in Bouvier, affects how historical chancery records are indexed and organized.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Original bills were themselves subdivided in classical equity pleading treatises, most influentially by Mitford:
- Original bills to obtain relief: The standard equity suit seeking affirmative remedy — injunction, specific performance, accounting, or rescission.
- Original bills to perpetuate testimony: Filed not for immediate relief but to preserve witness testimony for use in anticipated future proceedings.
- Original bills to examine witnesses de bene esse: Similar to the above; aimed at preserving testimony where a witness was aged, ill, or about to leave the jurisdiction.
- Original bills of interpleader: Filed by a stakeholder holding property claimed by two or more parties, asking the court to compel the claimants to litigate between themselves.
- Original bills to establish a deed or will: Seeking declaratory relief regarding the validity of an instrument.
Why It Matters in Research
The term is heavily context-dependent. In any document predating the merger of law and equity — and in U.S. federal practice, that means pre-1938 — encountering "original bill" requires the researcher to identify which court and which procedural tradition is involved. In English sources, the King's Bench usage is the older and narrower meaning; in American chancery practice, the equity pleading meaning dominates almost entirely.
The critical research trap: equity pleading manuals and historical chancery records use "original bill" as a term of art distinguishing the initiating pleading from the full taxonomy of ancillary and dependent bills. A researcher scanning for "original bill" in a chancery file index may miss relevant proceedings filed under ancillary bill designations — cross-bills, bills of review, supplemental bills — that are part of the same underlying dispute.
The merger of law and equity under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) and equivalent state reforms effectively retired the original bill as a procedural form. The complaint replaced it. However, the concept retains analytical relevance in: (1) researching pre-merger federal equity cases; (2) understanding state court records from jurisdictions that maintained separate equity courts into the mid-twentieth century; and (3) interpreting any treatise, practice manual, or judicial opinion written within the chancery tradition.
Mitford's Chancery Pleading (cited as "Mitf. Eq. Pl.") is the authoritative source all three dictionary entries converge on for this definition. Researchers encountering that citation should treat it as the doctrinal anchor for the equity pleading meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in close agreement, and all three trace to the same source: Mitford's Equity Pleading, page 33. This convergence signals that the definition was well-settled in the equity tradition and not a site of meaningful doctrinal dispute.
Bouvier adds the most procedurally useful context, noting the distinction between original bills (private party matters) and informations (state-related matters). This jurisdictional-functional distinction is absent from Black's and Burrill's and represents the most substantive information gap among the three sources.
Burrill and Black both note the King's Bench usage but treat it briefly, signaling that by the time these dictionaries were compiled, the old practice meaning was already of historical interest only.
What historical dictionaries collectively omit: any treatment of the procedural consequences of filing defects in an original bill, the standards for distinguishing original from ancillary bills in contested cases, and the American state-by-state variation in equity pleading terminology. Researchers relying solely on dictionary definitions will need to supplement with Mitford directly and with American equity practice treatises such as Story's Commentaries on Equity Pleading.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses equity pleading procedure or the original bill in its historical chancery context. The matched entries — National Origin Discrimination, Incorporation of the Bill of Rights, and VA Education Benefits — share only the word "bill" and are not relevant to this term. Omitted.