This series includes records that, at different times, fell under the designations of Law, Civil, Equity, and Civil Special Proceedings. Originally, these documents were called Law Papers. In 1984, the Maryland Rules were revised to merge Law and Equity into Civil. The Washington County Circuit Court Clerk at the time chose to keep the two series separate. He changed Law Papers to Civil Papers and Equity Papers to Civil Special Proceedings. In each of these series the case numbers continued to be assigned sequentially with no disruption caused by the change in name. On May 1, 1997, Washington County Circuit Court merged Civil Papers (formerly Law Papers) and Civil Special Proceedings (formerly Equity Papers) into a single series called Civil Papers. When the two series were merged, the case numbering was reformatted and began with # 21-C-96-0001.