Definition
Rien dit (Law French: "says nothing") is a plea in old common law pleading by which a defendant declined to answer the plaintiff's declaration — in effect, standing mute on the merits. It is the Law French equivalent of the Latin nil dicit. When a defendant entered rien dit, the court treated the failure to plead as a default, and judgment could be entered against the defendant on that basis. The term appears primarily in historical pleading records and in treatises describing pre-modern common law procedure.
Common Confusion
RIEN DIT vs. NIL DICIT: These are the same procedural posture rendered in two languages — Law French and Latin respectively. Researchers encountering one term in a source should recognize the other as its direct equivalent. Neither term should be confused with a demurrer (which contests the legal sufficiency of the pleading) or a general denial (which contests the facts). Rien dit is a silence, not an argument.
RIEN DIT vs. NON SUM INFORMATUS: Both produce a similar practical result — no substantive defense offered — but they are technically distinct. Non sum informatus ("I am not informed") was entered by an attorney on behalf of a defendant who had not instructed counsel to defend. Rien dit, by contrast, reflects the defendant's own failure or refusal to answer, not a gap in attorney instruction.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in early English common law pleading records, Year Books, or colonial American court documents will encounter rien dit and nil dicit with some regularity. The term matters for two navigational reasons.
First, the same procedural event may appear under either its Law French or Latin label depending on the period and the source. Year Books and early chancery records favor the French form; later treatises and American practice materials shift to the Latin. A search limited to one form will miss instances recorded under the other.
Second, the nature of the judgment that followed rien dit evolved over time. In early practice, a defendant who said nothing might simply be defaulted, but the precise procedural consequences — whether the plaintiff still needed to prove damages, whether a writ of inquiry issued — varied by action type and by period. Researchers tracing the procedural history of default judgments should treat rien dit entries as a starting point requiring further investigation of the specific court's practice and the nature of the underlying action.
The term itself is obsolete in modern pleading. No contemporary jurisdiction uses it as a live procedural device. Its research value is entirely historical.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both Black's and Burrill define rien dit minimally and identically: "says nothing" with a parenthetical cross-reference to nil dicit. Neither entry develops the procedural context beyond that gloss.
This brevity is itself informative. By the time the major law dictionaries were compiled in their standard editions, rien dit had already receded into historical interest. The dictionaries preserve it as a reference point rather than as active doctrine.
Researchers seeking fuller treatment of the procedural mechanics — what triggered the entry of rien dit, how courts handled the subsequent default, and how the practice differed across forms of action — will need to move beyond dictionary sources to older pleading treatises. Stephen's Principles of Pleading and Chitty's Treatise on Pleading address nil dicit in substantive procedural context, though neither is directed specifically at the French-language form.
Jurisdictional Note
Rien dit as a formal plea belongs to English common law pleading before the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. American courts inherited the terminology in colonial and early national practice, but the term largely disappeared as American states modernized their pleading rules. It carries no operative meaning in any current jurisdiction.