1. A writ issued by an appellate court directing a lower court to deliver the record in the case for review. Cf. ASSIGNMENT OF ERROR. [Cases: Appeal and Error 5, 398. C.J.S. Appeal and Error §§ 9–12, 18, 356, 724.]
“The writ of error is the most common of all the forms of remedial process available to an unsuccessful party after a final determination of the merits of the action, and is in common use in this country at the present time, where the common-law modes of procedure are followed. Its object … is to obtain a reversal of the judgment, either by reason of some error in fact affecting the validity and regularity of the legal decision itself, or on account of some mistake or error in law, apparent upon the face of the record, from which the judgment appears to have been given for the wrong party.” Benjamin J. Shipman, Handbook of Common-Law Pleading § 337, at 538 (Henry Winthrop Ballantine ed., 3d ed. 1923).
writ of error coram nobis. See CORAM NOBIS.
writ of error coram vobis. See CORAM VOBIS.
2. Hist. A writ issued by a chancery court, at the request of a party who was unsuccessful at trial, directing the trial court either to examine the record itself or to send it to another court of appellate jurisdiction to be examined, so that some alleged error in the proceedings may be corrected.
