structural:expansion, quality:correction, information:filtering, stylistic:style_transfer
History

Discovery evolved out of a unique feature of early equitable pleading procedure before the English Court of Chancery: among various requirements, a plaintiff's bill in equity was required to plead "positions". These were statements of evidence that the plaintiff assumed to exist in support of his pleading and which he believed lay within the knowledge of the defendant. They strongly resembled modern requests for admissions, in that the defendant was required to plead only whether they were true or false. The practice of pleading positiones in canon law (which influenced Chancery procedure) had originated with "the practice of the courts of the Italian communes in the early thirteenth century". Although canonists also looked to Roman law, positiones were unknown to the Romans.