Definition
A town cause is a procedural term from English practice referring to a civil cause — a lawsuit — that was tried at the sittings held for London and Middlesex, as distinguished from causes tried at the regular term sittings. The sittings for London and Middlesex were sessions of the superior common law courts (principally the Court of Common Pleas and later the Queen's or King's Bench) held in London after each legal term, specifically to dispose of cases arising from those two jurisdictions without requiring them to travel the assizes circuits. A case qualifying as a town cause was therefore tried locally, in or near the capital, rather than at nisi prius venues in the country.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively relevant to researchers working with English common law procedural materials from roughly the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It will surface in reports, practice manuals, and procedural treatises of that era and is essentially obsolete following the reorganization of the English court system under the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875, which consolidated the superior courts and rationalized trial procedure.
The key trap for researchers is the word "cause" itself. In modern usage, "cause" in a legal context often points toward causation doctrine — proximate cause, actual cause, superseding cause. Here it carries its older procedural meaning: a cause is simply a case or suit pending before a court. A researcher encountering "town cause" in a historical English source should not read it as having anything to do with causation analysis. The term is purely administrative and geographical in character.
Because the distinction between town causes and country causes governed which sittings a case was assigned to, researchers examining old Common Pleas or King's Bench records will find that town causes followed a separate docket and were subject to their own scheduling rules. Stephen's Commentaries, the source cited by both Black's and Bouvier's, is the appropriate primary reference for the procedural framework in which this term operated.
This term has no meaningful American legal history. The sittings-for-London-and-Middlesex system was a feature of the English superior court structure and was never transplanted to American jurisdictions, which developed their own circuit and assize analogs independently.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Bouvier's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement, offering near-identical definitions that trace to the same source: Stephen's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Black's cites volume 3 at page 517; Bouvier's cites the eleventh edition of the same work at page 556. The slight variation in page references reflects different editions of Stephen's, not any substantive difference in meaning.
Neither dictionary elaborates beyond the one-sentence definition, which is appropriate given the term's narrow procedural scope. Neither source attempts to extend the term beyond English practice or suggests any continuing relevance in American courts. The absence of any further gloss from either dictionary signals that this was a term of art within a specific procedural system rather than a concept with doctrinal depth.
Researchers should note that historical dictionaries do not flag the obsolescence of this term, as both Black's and Bouvier's were compiled while the English procedural tradition remained influential in American legal education. The term's practical irrelevance to American practice was simply assumed.
Jurisdictional Note
Town cause is a term of exclusively English procedural origin. It has no recognized equivalent in American, Scottish, Irish, or Commonwealth jurisdictions. Researchers working in any non-English legal system should treat this term as a historical artifact of English superior court practice only.