Abatement in pleading

An abatement in pleading, also called a plea in abatement, was a defence in common law to legal proceedings. It did not contest the principle of the plaintiff's right to relief. Instead it contended that the plaintiff had made a procedural error, such as one concerning place, time or method of assertion, and needed to bring fresh proceedings that followed the correct procedure. A successful plea merely paused proceedings until the problem was remedied. There were two fundamental styles: abatement in proceedings, which suspended the case until the error was fixed, and abatement in law, which terminated it completely although it could be restarted at the plaintiff's request. The plea in abatement was abolished as a particular form of response by the defendant when common-law pleading was replaced by Code Pleading and later by pleading rules such as the federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and it has been abolished in most if not all common law jurisdictions.