Demurrer

A demurrer is a pleading that challenges the legal sufficiency of an opposing party's pleading in a lawsuit, contesting whether a complaint states a valid claim even if every factual allegation in it is accepted as true; lawyers have informally described its function as asking so what of the pleading it targets. In the common law tradition, demurrers were a standard tool available to defendants in both civil and criminal cases to raise a legal objection before having to respond to the facts alleged. Their use has declined sharply since the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure abolished the demurrer in United States federal courts in 1938, replacing it with the motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, a model roughly thirty five states have since followed, while California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia continue to use demurrers in their state courts, and England and Wales replaced the device with summary judgment and strike out procedures; in criminal law, the demurrer has largely given way to the motion to quash. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/