The reformed procedure, commonly called code pleading, is designed to simplify the pleadings used in civil actions, to effect the abolition of forms of action, and the distinction between actions in equity and at common law, to abolish the technicalities which existed in the system of pleading at common law, to abolish all fictions in pleading, and to enable a party to obtain any relief to which the facts stated in his pleading show him entitled, regardless of the particular relief asked.

The first code of civil procedure, chiefly the work of David Dudley Field, was adopted by the legislature of New York, in 1848, and it has served as a pattern for the codes of civil procedure of the different states and territories which have adopted the reformed procedure.

This system of pleading is now in force in a majority of the states and territories of the union.