information:filtering
History

In England, discovery finally became available in the common law courts by the mid-1850s, after Parliament enacted the Evidence Act 1851 and the Common Law Procedure Act 1854. The right to discovery in the common law courts was "exercised somewhat more narrowly" than in chancery, but the point was that a litigant at common law no longer needed to file a bill of discovery in chancery just to obtain any discovery. The Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 merged together various trial courts, including the Court of Chancery, to form what is now known as the High Court of Justice. Although discovery by then had been available at common law for almost two decades, the new court generally looked to the older and broader form of discovery in chancery as the basis of its discovery rules.