In the common law, an answer is the first pleading by a defendant, usually filed and served upon the plaintiff within a certain strict time limit after a civil complaint or criminal information or indictment has been served upon the defendant.

* Abatement in pleading, a legal defense to civil and criminal actions based purely on procedural and technical issues involving the death of parties

In criminal trials in certain U. S. jurisdictions, it is a plea where the defendant neither admits nor disputes a charge, serving as an alternative to a pleading of guilty or not guilty.

Other former WorldCom officials charged with criminal penalties in relation to the company's financial misstatements include former CFO Scott Sullivan ( entered a guilty plea on March 2, 2004 to one count each of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false statements ), former comptroller David Myers ( pleaded guilty to securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and filing false statements on September 27, 2002 ), former accounting director Buford Yates ( pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges on October 7, 2002 ), and former accounting managers Betty Vinson and Troy Normand ( both pleading guilty to conspiracy and securities fraud on October 10, 2002 ).

" ( Samuel 1: 15: 33 ) were quoted by Israeli President Itzhak Ben-Zvi in his handwriting in response to a telegram sent by Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann's wife pleading for clemency after he was taken to Israel and sentenced to death.

At common law, a demurrer was the pleading through which a defendant would challenge legal sufficiency of a complaint in criminal or civil cases, but today the pleading has been discontinued in many jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and the U. S. federal court system ( though some state jurisdictions, including California and Virginia, retain it ).

In criminal cases, a demurrer was considered a common law due process right, to be heard and decided before the defendant was required to plead " not guilty ", or make any other pleading in response, without having to admit or deny any of the facts alleged.

The criminal case had just concluded, with Avanti executives pleading no contest to trade-secret theft, conspiracy to commit trade-secret theft, receiving stolen property, and securities fraud, and several receiving jail time.

Adler's jail sentence came after pleading guilty on 16 February 2005 to four criminal charges, which included:

There has however been at least one case of true abuse ; Corporal Donald Payne became Britain's first convicted war criminal after pleading guilty to abusing Iraqi detainees, which resulted in the death of one detainee Baha Mousa.

He subsequently resigned in 2007 after pleading guilty to criminal obstruction of justice, in a court case about his testimony about his influence and participation in the redistricting process following the 2000 census.

Adler was sentenced after pleading guilty on 16 February 2005 to four criminal charges:

In a non-criminal case in a United States district court, a litigant ( or a litigant's attorney ) who presents any pleading, written motion or other paper to the court is required, under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, to certify that, to the best of the presenter's knowledge and belief, the legal contentions " are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for the extension, modification, or reversal of existing law or the establishment of new law ".

In other cases, formal plea bargains in Pakistan are limited, but the prosecutor has the authority to drop a case or a charge in a case and, in practice, often does so, in return for a defendant pleading guilty on some lesser charge.

This meant that to determine what the parties were currently fighting about, a stranger to a case would no longer have to read the entire case file from scratch, but could ( in theory ) look only at the most recent version of the complaint filed by the plaintiff, the defendant's most recent answer to that complaint, and any court orders on demurrers to either pleading.

In a civil case the plaintiff sets forth its allegations in a complaint, petition or other pleading.

The ancient historian Cassius Dio writes that Berenice was at the height of her power during this time, and if it can be any indication as to how influential she was, Quintilian records an anecdote in his Institutio Oratoria where, to his astonishment, he found himself pleading a case on Berenice's behalf where she herself presided as the judge.

After several lawyers with Loyalist leanings refused to defend Preston, he sent a request to John Adams, pleading for him to work on the case.

In the Supreme Court opinion of Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U. S. 544, 562 ( 2007 ), Justice Souter criticized the court below for an approach to pleading that " would dispense with any showing of a reasonably founded hope that a plaintiff would be able to make a case ; Mr. Micawber's optimism would be enough.

Born in Paris, he was educated for the bar, but after pleading a single case he entered the first dragoon regiment and served for two years.

Court records show him pleading before Lord Mansfield in the Court of King's Bench soon after his election, and acting as counsel in Tonson v Collins, a copyright case, Thiquet v Bath, an important case on international law, and R v d ' Eon, acting for the prosecution in a feud over Louis XV's newly appointed cross-dressing Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

McDowell has arranged his arguments by pleading for a cumulative case of evidences, such as archaeological discoveries, the extant manuscripts of the biblical texts, fulfilled prophecies, and the miracle of the resurrection.

In the words of Thomas S. Freeman, one of the most important living Foxe scholars, " current scholarship has formed a more complex and nuanced estimate of the accuracy of Acts and Monuments .... Perhaps may be most profitably seen in the same light as a barrister pleading a case for a client he knows to be innocent and whom he is determined to save.

Petition can also be the title of a legal pleading that initiates a legal case.

" Although the demurrer technically also framed the issues in a case, treating the demurrer as a pleading came to be seen as irrational because it was the only pleading that required an immediate hearing and ruling on its content ( which consisted of an attack upon the complaint ), while the complaint and the answer merely stated the respective positions of each side but did not require hearings in and of themselves.

The case ended in 1996 with Green pleading no contest to the charges.

On August 16, 2010 the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied Jesse Friedman's bid to withdraw his guilty plea but said he was probably wrongly convicted and was pressured into pleading guilty to a crime he may not have committed because police, prosecutors and the judge in the case were overzealous and swept up in the hysteria of the times.

He was, however, considered an honest judge ; and his intervention, by the issue of writs of habeas corpus ( 8 March 1705 ), on behalf of the two counsel committed by the House of Commons to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms for pleading the cause of the plaintiffs in the Aylesbury election case, was brave ( see Sir James Montagu ).

He spent countless hours during his four-year tenure pleading the agency's case while Congressional appropriators cut its budget.

Ablett's faith was often highlighted in several tribunal appearances, in one case confessing and pleading guilty to striking Garry Lyon in an 1989 incident, declaring he " wasn't prepared to lie about it or compromise the truth in relationship with God ".

A motion for more definite statement in many jurisdictions in the United States, and under United States federal law, is a means of obtaining a more detailed motion from the opposing party in a civil case before interposing a responsive pleading.

It was further weakened by the fact that equity pleading in general was falling into disfavor, which culminated in the Judicature Acts of 1874 and 1875.

The death penalty for felony could be avoided by pleading benefit of clergy, which gradually evolved to exempt everybody ( whether clergy or not ) from that punishment for a first offence, except for high treason and offences which were expressly excluded by statute.

A defendant claiming insanity is pleading " not guilty by reason of insanity " ( NGRI ) or " guilty but insane / mentally ill " in some jurisdictions which, if successful, may result in the defendant being committed to a psychiatric facility for an indeterminate period.

" " Intelligent " has been described as " also an elusive term, meaning that the defendant knows his rights, the nature of the charge to which he is pleading, and the consequences of his plea.

In the United States, a complaint is the first pleading filed by a plaintiff which initiates a lawsuit.

In England and Wales, the first pleading is a Claim Form, issued under either Part 7 or Part 8 of the Civil Procedure Rules, which sets out the nature of the action and the relief sought, and may give brief particulars of the claim.

A demurrer is a pleading ( usually filed by a defendant ) which objects to the legal sufficiency of the opponent's pleading ( usually a complaint ) and demands that the court rule immediately about whether the pleading is legally adequate before the party must plead on the merits in response.

An answer is a pleading filed by a defendant which admits or denies the specific allegations set forth in a complaint and constitutes a general appearance by a defendant.

Common law pleading was the system of civil procedure used in England, which early on developed a strong emphasis on the form of action rather than the cause of action ( as a result of the Provisions of Oxford, which severely limited the evolution of the common law writ system ).

Augustine begins the book by asking why " the power of eloquence, which is so efficacious in pleading either for the erroneous cause or the right ", should not be used for righteous purposes ( IV. 3 ).

The 1879 constitutional convention also dispatched a message to Congress pleading for strong immigration restrictions, which led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.

Hayek did not like the expression “ social market economy ”, but he noticed in 1976 that some of his friends in Germany had succeeded in implementing the sort of social order for which he was pleading while using that phrase.

Second, he was acknowledged as universally able and of high integrity during his cases, retorting to those who complained of his defence of the Royalists that he was " pleading in defence of the laws which they professed they would maintain and preserve ; and that he was doing his duty to his client and was not to be daunted by such threatenings ".

Despite this, he wrote an encyclical pleading for international reconciliation, Pacem, Dei Munus Pulcherrimum There is a statue in Saint Peter's Basilica of the Pontiff absorbed in prayer, kneeling on a tomb which commemorates a fallen soldier of the war, which he described as a " useless massacre.

Her second Twilight Zone appearance, with billing in the closing credits, came in the episode broadcast the following week, " Dust ", in which she portrays another pleading child, Estrelita, a little Mexican girl, helping her father beg for the life of her condemned brother.

For a short time beginning in 1826 Yale began to offer a complete " practitioners ' course " which lasted two years and included practical courses, such as pleading drafting.

Other instances in the Qur ' an which are described in a concise manner are the rescue of Abraham from the fire into which he was thrown by his people ( 37: 97 ; 21: 68 – 70 ); his pleading for his father ( 28: 47 ); his quarrel with an unrighteous and powerful king ( 2: 58 ) and the miracle of the dead birds ( 2: 260 ).

After initially pleading " not guilty " to all charges and being released on bail Osho, on the advice of his lawyers, entered an " Alford plea "— a type of guilty plea through which a suspect does not admit guilt, but does concede there is enough evidence to convict him — to one count of having a concealed intent to remain permanently in the U. S. at the time of his original visa application in 1981 and one count of having conspired to have sannyasins enter into sham marriages to acquire U. S. residency.