While we have no direct evidence for that, it is highly likely that legal proceedings only started if there was a plaintiff, either the injured party or a representative, the latter almost certainly a kinsmen of the injured party. Proceedings probably will have been started by a complaint to whoever was seen responsible to uphold justice, which might have been a druid, in some late Gaulish policies an official, or perhaps a noble patron of either the injured party or the offender, or possibly the offender himself had to be approached. It is most likely that if the offender did not submit willingly to settle the dispute in court, he could be distrained by the plaintiff. While we have no direct evidence for the latter, it seems quite likely, given that the practice is well attested in early medieval Irish and Welsh law with cognate terminology, but also in the early Germanic laws, and even in early Roman law.