Legal Definitions - Notice Pleading

Definition: Notice pleading is a way of drafting legal documents that emphasizes notifying parties of general issues in a case. This means that parties can state their claims in general terms without having to provide detailed facts to support each claim.

For example, if someone is suing another person for breach of contract, they can simply state that the other person failed to fulfill their obligations under the contract without having to provide specific details about what those obligations were or how they were breached.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which were adopted in 1938, use a notice pleading system. This replaced the previous system, called fact pleading, which was much stricter and required parties to provide detailed facts to support each claim.

Many other American jurisdictions have since adopted similar notice pleading systems.