SURREJOINDER

Definition

In common law pleading, the surrejoinder is the plaintiff's written answer to the defendant's rejoinder. It is the fifth pleading in the classical sequence of common law pleadings at issue, arriving after the declaration, plea, replication, and rejoinder. Its function is to respond to the factual matter the defendant raised in the rejoinder, continuing the written exchange until the parties arrive at a single point in dispute — the "issue" — that can be submitted for decision.

Why It Matters in Research

The surrejoinder is almost exclusively a historical term. Common law pleading — the system that produced it — was abolished in England by the Common Law Procedure Acts of 1852 and 1854 and replaced by modern pleading practice. American jurisdictions followed suit throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, adopting code pleading (beginning with New York's Field Code of 1848) and later the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938), which reduced pleadings to a complaint, answer, and in limited circumstances a reply. The surrejoinder has no place in modern American civil practice under the Federal Rules or any state system modeled on them. Researchers will encounter the term almost entirely in pre-nineteenth-century English common law materials, early American case law from colonial and early federal periods, and historical treatises on pleading. When reading those sources, it is essential to hold the full pleading sequence in mind: declaration → plea (or answer) → replication → rejoinder → surrejoinder → rebutter → surrebutter. The surrejoinder occupies the fifth position. Confusing its place in the sequence — or confusing it with the replication, which is the plaintiff's first answer — is a common error in reading older opinions and treatises. For corpus researchers: sources indexing or cross-referencing pleading terms may catalog the surrejoinder under PLEADING (as Bouvier's does) or under JOINDER (as Anderson's does), rather than as a standalone entry. Searches limited to the term alone may therefore miss relevant analytical discussions.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical sources are in close agreement on the core definition: the surrejoinder is the plaintiff's answer of fact to the defendant's rejoinder. Black's (both editions) and Burrill's offer the same compact formulation, each citing Stephen's Principles of Pleading (Steph. Pl. 59). Bouvier's is the most substantive, adding that the surrejoinder is "governed in every respect by the same rules as the replication" and citing both Stephen and the Comyn's Digest (7 Com. Dig. 389) — a useful pointer for researchers consulting those treatises. Anderson's is the least helpful, deflecting to a cross-reference for JOINDER without independent analysis. None of the historical sources address the abolition of the surrejoinder in practice or its obsolescence, which reflects the period in which they were compiled. Researchers relying on these entries should treat them as descriptions of a superseded procedural system, not current practice. The phrase "answer of fact" that appears in Black's and Burrill's is a meaningful qualifier: the surrejoinder, like other pleadings in this sequence beyond the declaration and plea, was expected to respond to factual matter, not to introduce new legal objections. This limiting principle — reflected in Stephen's analysis — was part of the technical discipline of common law pleading that code and notice pleading were designed to replace.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Common Law Pleading; Pleading, History of.

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