Formerly, when a master in chancery was directed by the court of chancery to make an inquiry or investiga-tion lnto any matter arlslng out of a suit, and which could not conveniently be brought before the court ltself, each party in the suit carried in before the master a statement showing how the party bringing it iu repre-sented the matter in question to he; and this statement was technically termed a “state of facts,” and formed the ground upon which the evidence was received, the evidence be-ing, in fact, brought by one party or the other, to prove hls own or disprove hls op-ponent’s state of facts. And so now, a state of facts means the stntement made by any one of his version of the facts. Brown
Source: Black's Law Dictionary 2nd Ed (1910)