Definition
A formal pleading formula used to close a declaration in common law civil procedure. The phrase — rendered in full as "and therefore he brings his suit" — appeared at the conclusion of a plaintiff's declaration as a ritualized assertion that the plaintiff was properly before the court with an actionable claim. It served no substantive legal function but was a required element of the declaration's formal structure under the rules of common law pleading.
The Latin form, *productio sectæ*, signals its origin in the formulary system of pleading. The "suit" referred to here is not the lawsuit itself in the modern sense but the older meaning of *secta* — the witnesses or followers a plaintiff was once required to produce to support a claim. By the time common law pleading had fully developed, the requirement to actually produce witnesses had dissolved, but the formula survived as a verbal remnant.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Production" means the act of making, creating, or presenting something. "Suit" in a legal context commonly means a lawsuit or legal proceeding.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Production" — the act of producing, bringing forth, or exhibiting. "Suit" — the act of suing; a legal proceeding.
The ordinary combination of these words suggests something like "presenting evidence in a lawsuit." The legal term of art means something narrower and more archaic: a fixed closing formula in a declaration, not evidence-gathering or litigation activity in any modern sense. A researcher encountering "production of suit" in a historical pleading should not read it as referring to discovery, proof, or the commencement of litigation.
Common Confusion
Do not confuse PRODUCTION OF SUIT with:
— PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS or DISCOVERY: Modern procedural mechanisms requiring parties to disclose evidence have no relationship to this term. "Production" here is a pleading formality, not an evidentiary demand.
— BRINGING SUIT / FILING SUIT: While the formula gestures toward the act of commencing litigation, production of suit is a concluding formula in an already-filed declaration, not the act of initiating a case.
— SECTA (or SUIT OF COURT): The underlying concept of *secta* — the retinue of witnesses a plaintiff once literally produced — is a related but distinct historical institution. Production of suit is the fossilized verbal echo of that institution, not the institution itself.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs almost exclusively to the history of common law pleading and will surface in sources dealing with the formal structure of declarations before the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. Researchers working in pre-reform English common law, early American state court practice, or treatise literature on pleading (particularly sources citing or building on Stephen's *Principles of Pleading*) will encounter it as a fixed phrase.
Several research traps apply:
First, the formula's survival into American practice was uneven. Pleading reforms — culminating in code pleading after the Field Code of 1848 and eventually in modern notice pleading — eliminated the formal declaration structure that made production of suit necessary. Researchers tracing litigation documents across the nineteenth century should expect the formula to disappear from practice, not because the law changed on this point specifically, but because the declaration form itself was displaced.
Second, the phrase appears in treatise cross-references under both its English rendering and its Latin form, *productio sectæ*. Sources indexed under one form may not cross-reference the other. Burrill's dictionary flags this with an explicit "See *Productio sectæ*" reference — a navigational cue worth following in historical research.
Third, because the formula was purely formal, its presence or absence in a historical pleading document tells the researcher almost nothing about the substantive dispute. It is a structural artifact, not a substantive indicator.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries are in tight agreement: Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill reproduce nearly identical definitions, all anchoring to Stephen's *Principles of Pleading* at pages 428–429. This uniformity reflects the formula's settled, non-contested status in nineteenth-century legal literature — there was simply nothing to dispute about a closing ritual.
Burrill adds meaningful value by supplying the Latin form *productio sectæ* and directing researchers to the companion entry, acknowledging the term's roots in the older institution of *secta*. Neither edition of Black's provides this Latin cross-reference, which represents a gap in those sources for researchers interested in the historical and doctrinal lineage of the formula.
What all three sources omit: any discussion of what happens in jurisdictions or periods where the formula was altered or omitted, and any note about the formula's disappearance under code pleading. Historical dictionaries treat it as a living convention; modern research must account for the fact that it is a dead one.
Jurisdictional Note
Production of suit was a feature of common law pleading as received in England and the American states following English practice. Its obsolescence tracks the adoption of code or notice pleading, which occurred at different times across American jurisdictions throughout the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Researchers working in jurisdictions that retained common law pleading forms longer than others may find the formula persisting further into the historical record.