In pleading. A form of allegation in which the trespass, criminal offense, or other wrongful act complained of is charged to have been committed on a specified day and to have “continued” to the present time, or is averred to have been committed at divers days and times within a given period or on a specified day and on divers other days and times between that day and another. This is called “laying the time with a continuando.”
Law Dictionary – Alternative Legal Definition
plead. The Dame of an averment sometimes contained in a declaration in trespass, that the injury or trespass has been continued. For example, if Paul turns up the ground of Peter and tramples upon his grass, for three days together, and Peter desires to recover damages, as well for the subsequent acts of treading down the grass and subverting the soil, as for the first, he must complain of such subsequent trespasses in his actions brought to compensate the former. This he may do by averring that Paul, on such a day, trampled upon the herbage and turned up the ground, continuing the said trespasses for three days following. This averment seems to impart a continuation of the same identical act of trespass; it has, however, received, by continued usage, another interpretation, and is taken, also, to denote a repetition of the same kind of injury. When the trespass is not of the same kind, it cannot be averred in a continuando; for example, when the injury consists in killing and carrying away an animal, there remains nothing to which a similar injury may again be offered. 1 Wms. Saund. 24, n. 1. 2. There is a difference between he continuando and the averment diversis diebus et temporibus, on divers days and times. In the former, the injuries complained of have been committed upon one and the same occasion; in the latter, the acts complained of, though of the same kind, are distinct and unconnected.