Presentment - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition presentment

Definition :

Presentment, a very comprehensive term, including not only presentments properly so called, but also inquisitions of office, and indictments by a grand jury; properly speaking, the notice taken by a grand jury of any offence, from their own knowledge or observation, without any bill of indictment laid before them at the suit of the Crown; as the presentment of a nuisance, a libel, and the like, upon which the officer of the Court must afterwards frame an indictment before the party presented can be put to answer it.

Presentments are also made in courts-leet and courts-baron, before the stewards, 1 Steph. Com.