Test Action

An action brought to determine a doubtful right affecting many persons. It may be an action selected from a number of pending actions brought to enforce such a right, the parties agreeing that all actions shall follow the decision in the test action, or a single action may be brought by one person at the instance of all to determine the right. Test cases are sometimes had in criminal practice where the validity of a statute or ordinance is questioned, and a prosecution is lodged against one person, with the tacit understanding that further prosecutions will be postponed, or will be determined according to the result of that one.

An action selected out of a considerable number of suits, concurrently depending in the same court, brought by several plaintiffs against the same defendant, or by one plaintiff against different defendants, all similar in their circumstances, and embracing the same questions, and to be supported by the same evidence, the selected action to go first to trial, (under an older of court equivalent to consolidation,) and its decision to serve as a itest of the right of recovery in the others, all parties agreeing to be bound by the result of the test action.

Defined under Test in Black's Law Dictionary.