Definition
Trium is a Latin pleading term from the common law tradition, used as the name of a specific plea entered in an action of debt brought upon an obligation for the performance of an award. By this plea, the defendant denies that he submitted to the arbitration underlying the obligation — that is, he traverses the foundational allegation that a valid submission to arbitration ever occurred. Without an admissible submission, no award can be enforced against the defendant, and the plea of trium provides the formal procedural vehicle for raising that denial.
The term functions as a label or shorthand for the plea rather than as a substantive legal doctrine in its own right. It appears in the pleading context of arbitration-related debt actions and is closely tied to the procedural forms governing arbitration enforcement under the older common law system.
Why It Matters in Research
Trium is a narrow, archaic pleading term that will surface almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English common law materials and in American decisions and treatises that perpetuate classical pleading forms. Researchers encountering the term in historical sources should understand it as a term of art belonging to formal common law pleading, not to modern arbitration law or civil procedure.
Several navigational points are worth noting:
First, the term's relevance is almost entirely historical. Modern arbitration practice — whether under the Federal Arbitration Act or its state counterparts — has replaced the formal plea structure within which trium operated. A researcher looking for the modern equivalent would examine defenses to arbitration enforcement, not common law plea nomenclature.
Second, the source material in Black's Law Dictionary appears in a fragmentary entry that bleeds into surrounding entries (including maxims beginning with "Nullum"), suggesting the historical text was compressed or compiled without clean separation. Researchers using that source should be alert to the possibility that associated text belongs to adjacent entries and should not be attributed to the definition of trium itself.
Third, Bacon's Abridgement ("Bac. Abr."), cited in the Black's entry under "Arbitr.," is the most likely primary source for further detail on this plea and its formal requirements. That treatise provides the procedural context that the dictionary entry only sketches.
Fourth, researchers working in early American state court records may encounter trium in debt actions where an arbitration award was the basis of suit. The plea would typically appear in the defendant's pleadings as a denial of the submission, and understanding its function clarifies the structure of the dispute being adjudicated.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the only dictionary entry identified for this term in the available sources, and the entry is brief. It identifies trium as a Latin pleading term, situates it in actions of debt on an obligation to perform an award, and specifies its operative function as a denial of submission to arbitration. The citation to Bacon's Abridgement is the entry's primary authority.
The entry as preserved appears to be editorially incomplete or fragmentarily compiled — the surrounding text shifts abruptly to Latin maxims (Nullum iniquum est præsumendum; Nullum matrimonium, ibi nulla dos; Nullum simile est idem) that are plainly separate entries. This compression is a known artifact of certain historical dictionary editions and printings. Researchers should not treat the adjacent maxims as related to trium's definition.
No competing or amplifying treatment of trium has been identified in the other standard historical legal dictionaries. Its absence from Bouvier's Law Dictionary and from later modern legal dictionaries reflects the term's obsolescence as formal common law pleading gave way to code pleading and then to modern procedural rules.
Jurisdictional Note
Trium as a formal plea belongs to the English common law pleading system and its early American reception. It has no operative role in any modern American jurisdiction, which has abandoned the forms of common law pleading in favor of notice pleading or fact pleading under civil rules codes.