Rule 20.Special Pleading Rules

Some facts are awkward or costly to plead in full detail, so Rule 20 lets a party use shorthand for a set of recurring situations instead of reciting every underlying fact. A party pleading that conditions precedent were met can allege generally that all conditions precedent were performed or occurred, without walking through each one — though if the other side denies that specifically and with particularity, the pleading party still has to prove the underlying facts at trial. The same trade-off applies to pleading a prior judgment or determination from a court or officer of special jurisdiction: the pleader can allege it was “duly given or made” without reciting the facts that gave that court or officer jurisdiction, but must be ready to prove those jurisdictional facts at trial if the allegation is controverted. A private statute can be pled by its title and passage date alone, with the court taking judicial notice of its contents, and the corporate existence of a city or county can be pled as a bare conclusion — that the city or county exists and was duly organized under state law — rather than proven fact by fact. The same shortcut covers ordinances and comprehensive plans, which can be cited by title or common name and date rather than quoted in full, and official documents or acts, which can be alleged as issued or done “in compliance with law.”

Defamation gets its own shortcut in section E: a plaintiff suing for libel or slander does not have to plead the extrinsic facts connecting the defamatory statement to the plaintiff — a general allegation that it was published or spoken concerning the plaintiff is enough, again subject to proof at trial if the defendant disputes the connection. The defendant, in turn, may plead both the truth of the statement and any mitigating circumstances in the answer, and gets to offer evidence of those mitigating circumstances whether or not the truth defense succeeds. Two more provisions protect how a pleading is drafted rather than what it says: an allegation is not defective merely because it is phrased as a recital instead of a direct statement, and a denial is not treated as an admission merely because it contains a negative pregnant — a denial that, taken literally, disputes only a narrow or immaterial detail while leaving the real substance of the allegation admitted.

The last three sections deal with parties a pleader cannot fully identify. Section H lets a party who does not know an opposing party’s real name sue under any name the pleader chooses, then amend the process and pleadings once the true name is discovered. Section I addresses a deceased property owner’s heirs: when they are proper defendants in an action relating to property but their names and residences are unknown, they can be sued under the title of the deceased’s “unknown heirs.” Section J extends the same idea to actions to quiet title or determine an adverse claim, letting the plaintiff add a catch-all defendant description covering “all other persons or parties unknown” who might claim a right, title, lien, or interest in the property — binding anyone with an unidentified stake in the outcome without having to track each one down by name. Rule 7 relies directly on these unknown-party categories when it comes to serving heirs or persons who cannot be named individually.