Definition
An obsolete procedural term referring to the reversal of a judgment by a court of error on the basis of error in fact — that is, a factual defect apparent in the record that renders the original judgment invalid. Distinguished from reversal for error in law, recal operated through the writ of error mechanism and was the functional remedy when a judgment could not stand due to a factual irregularity such as the death of a party before judgment, infancy, or coverture not raised at trial.
The term is now extinct in American practice. Modern appellate procedure has entirely displaced the writ of error framework within which recal operated.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Obsolete spelling of "recall"; also flagged as a misspelling of "recall."
Historical common usage: No independent entry in Webster's 1913; treated as a variant spelling of "recall," meaning to call back, summon again, or revoke.
The legal term recal is not a variant of the common word recall in the sense of summoning back or revoking. In its technical procedural sense, recal describes a specific mechanism for reversing a judgment on factual grounds via writ of error. A researcher encountering this term in historical court records or pleading manuals should not interpret it through the lens of the modern common word — the concepts are related in that both involve undoing something already done, but the legal term carries precise procedural content that the common word does not.
---
Common Confusion
Recal is easily confused with reversal for error in law, which operated through the same writ of error framework. The distinction matters: error in fact (the domain of recal) involved facts outside the record that, had they been known, would have prevented judgment — such as a party's death, legal disability, or similar supervening circumstance. Error in law, by contrast, addressed mistakes in the application of legal rules visible on the face of the record. Some historical sources use reversal loosely to cover both; researchers should not assume the terms are interchangeable when reading pleading manuals or early American court records.
Recal should not be confused with the modern products liability concept of a product recall, which is an entirely separate legal and regulatory concept.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-nineteenth-century American practice materials or English common law pleading sources will encounter recal almost exclusively in procedural contexts — particularly in early New York practice (note the Wendell's Reports citation) and in English practice manuals. The term has no living legal currency; it appears as a technical term of art in a procedural system that no longer exists.
Two traps await the historical researcher. First, the term's spelling variants (recal, recall) create indexing problems in digitized sources: full-text searches for "recall" will surface recal entries, but the reverse is not always true. Second, a researcher unfamiliar with writ of error practice may misread recal as a general synonym for reversal, missing the specific factual-error predicate the term requires.
The Archbold Practice reference (1 Arch. Pr. 281) and the Wendell's Reports citation (16 Wend. 48) are the key primary anchors for this term. Archbold's Practice manuals were standard pleading references in early American courts; Wendell's Reports are early New York appellate decisions. Any corpus research on recal should center on these jurisdictional and doctrinal clusters.
This term has no meaningful connection to contemporary tort law product recall doctrine. The encyclopedia cross-reference above is provided because researchers searching "recal" in the Law Mind corpus may be looking for product recall materials; the products liability entry addresses that concept directly.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the sole historical dictionary source for this term, and its entry is characteristically brief: "In practice. To reverse a judgment on writ of error for error in fact." Burrill supplies the essential procedural content and provides the two citations that anchor the term historically. No other standard historical legal dictionaries — not Black's early editions, not Bouvier — carry a dedicated entry for recal as a distinct procedural term, suggesting it was already becoming archaic or was treated as a subspecies of writ of error practice rather than an independent term of art. Burrill's coverage here is thus both the most complete and essentially the only formal lexicographic treatment available.
---
Jurisdictional Note
The term appears most prominently in early New York practice materials, reflecting that state's extended reliance on English common law pleading forms into the early nineteenth century. Its usage would be analogous in other states that adopted English writ of error practice, but researchers should not assume uniform treatment — many states quickly abandoned or modified the writ of error framework in their early procedural codes.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Products Liability — Post-Sale Duty to Warn and Recall (Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia) — for the modern product recall concept, which shares the search term but is doctrinally unrelated.
---