INTERPLEADER  , in

English law, the form of action by which' a person who is sued at law by two or more parties claiming adversely to each other for the recovery of money or goods wherein he has no interest, obtains relief by procuring the rival claimants to try their rights between or among themselves only . Originally the only relief available to the possessor against such adverse claims was by means of a bill of interpleader in equity . The Interpleader Act 1831 enabled the defendant in such cases, on application to the court, to have the original action stayed and converted into a trial between the two claimants . The Common Law Procedure Act of 186o further extended the power of the II against whom it was pronounced was subject to the jurisdiction by nationality or domicile; the judgment may then be sued on as giving of itself a good title to the sum decreed by it to be paid . For domestic purposes the competence may exist on quite other grounds . By its own territorial law a court may be authorized to entertain a suit in personam because the plaintiff possesses its nationality, as by Article 14 of the code Napoleon, or because the contract sued on was made or was to be performed in the territory, and so forth . But judgments based on these grounds will not be enforceable outside the territory . Here we touch the root principles of our subject . The distinction between domestic and international grounds of competence can only be explained by the history of law, and we come in sight of the fact that the rules of private international law rest finally on conventions which could not have existed if the civilization of different countries had not so much that was common in its origin and in the course which it has followed, but which suit the life of those countries just because that life is itself another outcome of those common antecedents . common law courts in interpleader; and the Judicature Act 1875 enacted that the practice and procedure under these two statutes should apply to all divisions of the High Court of Justice . The Judicature Act also extended the remedy of interpleader to a debtor or other person liable in respect of a debt alleged to be assigned, when the assignment was disputed . In 1883 the acts of 1831 and 186o were embodied in the form of rules by the Rules of the Supreme Courts (1883), O. lvii. by reference to which all questions of interpleader in the High Court of Justice are now determined .

The acts themselves were repealed by the

Statute Law Revision Act of the same year . Interpleader is the equivalent of multiplepoinding in Scots law .