Alla enormia

What does Alla enormia mean in American Law?

The definition of Alla enormia in the law of the United States, as defined by the lexicographer Arthur Leff in his legal dictionary is:

“Other injuries,” a term usually found at the end of the complaint in an action of trespass, used to cover any injuries in addition to those specifically mentioned earlier in the pleading which might be sought to be proved at the trial. The complaint might allege, e.g., that the defendant with force of arms broke into the Plaintiff’s land, cut down trees, killed pigs, broke fences, “et alia enormia,” with the proof at the trial showing that the defendant also set fire to the barn (perhaps,

in fact, accidentally). There is some evidence that these “alia enormia” clauses were the real gravamen of the complaint, the other force-of-arms, etc. stuff just being there to get jurisdiction into the royal courts. In any event, such clauses, (though hardly in Latin) are still in use today in all kinds of litigation, to cover the possibility that one might have left something out in the more particularized part of one’s pleading; at the end of an automobileaccident complaint, e.g., one might expect to find, after a list of the plaintiff’s broken bones and contused flesh, something like “and other great and grievous permanent bodily injuries.” The discovery process will,

in modern practice, serve eventually to make more specific the actually claimed injuries, but the plaintiff’s attorney still does not want to have to replead (or move after trial to conform the pleading to the proof) if some injury he didn’t initially mention turns out to be provable. And in some jurisdictions with strong notions of notice pleading, the injury-alleging portion of the complaint is in its entirety little more than an alia enormia clause.