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pleading

Draft and review Scottish civil court pleadings using Black, Braid, Scullion & Johnston, "An Introduction to Written Pleading", 2nd edn (EUP 2025) with Macphail, Macphail's Sheriff Court Practice, 4th edn (2006) as second source — the only two books this skill cites. Use when asked to draft or check an initial writ, summons, defences, condescendence, pleas-in-law, counterclaim, adjustment, amendment, family-action pleadings, or pleadings for personal injuries/commercial actions. Every paragraph of the OCR'd Black book is indexed (references/paragraph_index.csv) with stable PB ids; Macphail is cited only against references/Macphail_pleadings.md (paras 9.01-9.43 + 10.55-10.58 verified; 10.01-10.54 NOT indexed); the skill never invents page numbers — it cites only indexed paragraphs and quotes verbatim. Self-learning: appends lessons to learnings.md.

Source: .opencode/skills/pleading/SKILL.md — site rebuilt 2026-09-05.

Pleading — Scots Civil Pleadings per Black, Braid, Scullion & Johnston (2nd edn, EUP 2025) and Macphail (4th edn, 2006)

When to run

  • User asks to draft, review, or redraft an initial writ / summons, defences, condescendence, pleas-in-law, counterclaim, or minute.
  • User asks for drafting guidance on family actions, personal injuries actions, commercial actions, or "beating" a time-bar.
  • A pleading is being checked for relevancy, fair notice, or proper structure.

Core rule: this skill cites TWO books

  1. Black, Braid, Scullion & Johnston, An Introduction to Written Pleading, 2nd edn (Edinburgh UP 2025) — the primary drafting manual; source of every drafting rule below.
  2. Macphail, Macphail's Sheriff Court Practice, 4th edn (2006) — secondary practitioner authority, cited only from the verified extract references/Macphail_pleadings.md (Ch 9 Written Pleadings complete: paras 9.01–9.43; Ch 10 Amendment: only the surviving tail, paras 10.55–10.58). Cite as Macphail para 9.xx (printed page NNN from the ### Page markers).

The books' own advice is followed: cases they cite are themselves checked before being used as authority (that is the case-law skill's job, and the case-law skill's big red warning applies to anything quoted from either book's footnotes).

⚠️ DRAFTING WARNING

Both books are practice manuals, not statutes. Their rules (relevancy, fair notice, condescendence structure, pleas-in-law conventions) are practice doctrine, not statutory text. When a pleading must satisfy a specific rule (OCR/RCS), check the rule itself — the books give the rule references (e.g. OCR r 33.7, RCS ch 49) and they must be current.

The indexed corpus (paragraph index)

  • Source OCR: references/Black_et_al-Written-Pleading-2ed-2025_OCR.txt (33 photo pages).
  • Index: references/paragraph_index.csv + paragraph_index.md — every paragraph has a PB id: PB{photo}.{n} (e.g. PB16.4 = photo page 16, paragraph 4).
  • Each row also carries: printed book page (from the nearest running head — mechanically verified, blank when none is detectable on that photo), tag (pagehead/subhead/list/body), section (nearest TOC-anchored heading), and flag (y = [LOW CONFIDENCE]/[FIGURE UNVERIFIED] residual).
  • Coverage: the photos index book pages 12–51 (Drafting the Writ), 105–127 (Special Causes: Family Actions, start of Petitions), 150–167 (Ethical Pleading, start of Beyond the Pleadings) plus the Contents pages. Anything outside that range is NOT indexed — say so rather than guessing.
  • Rebuild anytime the OCR is re-run: python tools/index_paragraphs.py.

Second source: Macphail (verified extract)

  • Extract: references/Macphail_pleadings.md — verbatim from the Full Transcription (source WORK\30_Research\Books\Macphail, Macphail's Sheriff Court Practice (4th Ed) - Full Transcription.md; transcription chunks are not in printed-page order, so only the Full Transcription is sliced, by ### Page markers).
  • Available: Ch 9 Written Pleadings complete (paras 9.01–9.43 + footnotes; printed pp 679–686+). Paras 9.07 and 9.21 are blank in the transcription — treat them as NOT INDEXED. Use Macphail for detail where Black et al is summary: specification and relevancy (9.28–9.43), admissions (9.20–9.27), the pleader's duties (9.13), res judicata (9.11).
  • NOT available: Ch 10 paras 10.01–10.54 (absent from the transcription's source scan) — amendment-procedure questions (leave to amend, minute of amendment, amendment at proof) are NOT INDEXED against Macphail unless verified from the print book; available only: 10.55 (abbreviated/late amendment procedure), 10.56 (further minutes), 10.57 (appeals), 10.58 (deletion of scandalous averments).
  • The per-page Chapter_NNN.md chunk files in WORK\30_Research\Books\ are mislabelled (chunk numbers are scan-page numbers, not printed pages) — never cite or slice from them.

Citation rules

  1. Cite paragraphs as PB16.4 with the book page when known: PB16.4 (book p. 33).
  2. Quote the paragraph text verbatim from the CSV/sidecar when its wording matters — never paraphrase a rule into authority.
  3. Never invent a PB id or book page. If the index has no entry for the point (outside covered pages, or not in the photo set), state NOT INDEXED: <point> and offer to OCR the needed pages.
  4. Flagged rows (flag=y) carry OCR uncertainty — quote with [OCR] and check the photo page (WORK\00_Inbox\PleadingBook_2026-02-06\pleading book.pdf) if precision matters.
  5. The photo-page marker in the sidecar is the physical page of the scanned copy; the book column is the printed page number of the actual book.

Drafting workflow

  1. Read the applicable paragraphs first — locate them via the index:
  2. Wording/structure of writ or defences → ch 2 ((a) heading, (b) description, (c) instance, (d) crave, (e) condescendence, (f) pleas-in-law): index section = The drafting; photos 16–21.
  3. Relevancy & fair notice → condescendence paragraphs (PB16.4–PB18.x); deepen with Macphail 9.28–9.43 (specification, relevancy, alternative averments).
  4. Pleas-in-law conventions (Separatim, Esto, order) → PB19.7–PB21.x.
  5. Admissions and deemed admissions → Macphail 9.20–9.27.
  6. Amendment of pleadings → Macphail 10.55–10.58 only; leave-to-amend and minute-of-amendment procedure NOT INDEXED.
  7. Time-bar / urgency / "beating" a time-bar → photos 8–9.
  8. Ethical limits (no averment without evidence, no fraud lightly averred, expert reports) → ch 6: photos 3–11 and Macphail 9.13.
  9. Family actions (jurisdiction, warrants, F9, defences, minute & answer) → ch 5: photos 22–33.
  10. Adjustment → indexed where present; else NOT INDEXED.
  11. Apply the rules to the matter — draft the pleading in the matter's folder with the matter's facts; use the book's structure (numbered articles of condescendence, pleas-in-law matching each crave).
  12. Check the checkable — each rule the book states that is rule-based (e.g. OCR r 33.7 warrants, r 33.2(2) averments, form references F1/F9/F26/F27) is verified against the current OCR/RCS text before the pleading relies on it.
  13. Flag what is not indexed — if the user's point falls outside the indexed pages (e.g. petitions in detail, summary applications, written submissions), say NOT INDEXED and offer to OCR those pages from the PDF.

Output discipline

  • Return the pleading as a document in the matter folder (follow the matter's template/layout conventions), with a short Sources: footer listing the PB ids + book pages (and any Macphail paras) used.
  • When reviewing an existing pleading, list the issues with the citation for the rule violated (e.g. "condescendence lacks fair notice — book p. 34, PB17.x; Macphail 9.28") and quote the book's wording.
  • Never "fix" content: propose re-drafting language, but preserve facts and figures as instructed by the user.

Self-learning

Append dated one-liners to learnings.md after each use: index quirks, OCR gaps discovered, rule updates that changed the book's advice, PB ids that were wrong.