Definition
Settling interrogatories refers to two related but distinct procedural concepts:
1. (Procedure / Evidence) The court's determination of objections to written questions — interrogatories and cross-interrogatories — that have been prepared for use in taking a deposition. When a party submits interrogatories to be put to a witness, opposing counsel may object to certain questions as improper in form, scope, or subject matter. A judge or officer then reviews those objections and resolves which questions will stand, which will be modified, and which will be struck. The result is a settled — that is, finalized — set of interrogatories ready for use in the examination.
2. (Contracts / Accounts) The adjustment or liquidation of mutual accounts between parties who have been dealing together. In this sense, "settling" means bringing accounts to a final reckoning — determining what is owed, by whom, and in what amount — so that the balance can be reduced to a single sum or discharged. The word "interrogatories" in this context has fallen out of use; the modern equivalent is simply an accounting or settlement of accounts.
The first meaning is the dominant procedural sense. The second meaning is primarily historical and appears in older equity and commercial sources.
Common Confusion
"Settling interrogatories" is not the same as serving or answering interrogatories. Service is the act of delivering written questions to a party. Answering is the responding party's obligation. Settling is the prior judicial step of filtering and approving the questions themselves before they are put to a witness, particularly in the context of deposition by written questions — a procedure more prevalent before modern oral deposition practice became standard. Researchers encountering this phrase in historical records should not assume it describes the familiar modern interrogatory practice under rules-based civil procedure.
The term also should not be confused with "settling a case" (reaching a compromise resolution) or "settling an account" (a related but separate concept addressed under the second definition above).
Why It Matters in Research
This term is a trap for researchers working in pre-twentieth-century procedural materials. Before the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) and their state equivalents standardized oral deposition practice, written interrogatories submitted to commissioners or examiners were a primary mechanism for taking out-of-court testimony. The process of settling those interrogatories — obtaining judicial approval of the questions before examination — was a formal, sometimes contested, step with its own procedural rules and case law.
Researchers searching nineteenth-century equity practice records, chancery proceedings, or admiralty files will encounter "settling interrogatories" as a routine stage of pre-trial procedure. It does not map neatly onto any single modern procedural step. The closest modern analog is a court ruling on objections to deposition questions or a protective order limiting the scope of written discovery — but neither is an exact match.
The contractual meaning (settling mutual accounts) can appear in commercial and equity cases involving long-running merchant relationships, partnership dissolutions, or estate accountings. In those contexts the phrase signals a process of account stated or accounting in equity, not anything procedurally connected to depositions. Context will almost always disambiguate, but researchers should be alert to both senses when indexing or cataloging older materials.
Because the procedural mechanism of depositions by written interrogatories has largely disappeared from practice, modern treatises give this term little attention. The bulk of useful material sits in nineteenth-century equity practice manuals, chancery rules, and admiralty procedure texts.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary preserves both definitions cleanly. The primary entry addresses the court's determination of objections to interrogatories and cross-interrogatories in preparation for taking a deposition — confirming that settling was a judicial act, not a party act. The secondary entry under contracts identifies settling as adjustment or liquidation of mutual accounts, linking it to the broader concept of account stated and final reckoning between dealing parties.
Historical sources are largely consistent on the procedural meaning. The variation across editions of Black's reflects the gradual obsolescence of written deposition practice rather than any doctrinal dispute about what settling meant when the procedure was in active use. Earlier editions give the term more real estate; later editions compress or relocate it, which itself signals its declining practical importance.
What historical dictionaries do not address: the tactical dimensions of the settling stage — the grounds on which objections were sustained or overruled, the standards applied by different courts, or the relationship between settling interrogatories and the broader equity discovery apparatus. For that, researchers must move to treatises on equity pleading and practice from the period.
Jurisdictional Note
The procedure of settling interrogatories was more formally developed in equity and admiralty courts than at common law, and its specific rules varied across English, American federal, and state chancery systems. Researchers should identify the particular court system and time period before drawing procedural conclusions from primary sources using this term.