rebuttal

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act of rebutting.
• noun A statement made in rebutting.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of rebutting; refutation; confutation; contradiction.
• noun In law, that part of a trial in which the plaintiff endeavors to meet the defendant's evidence by counter-evidence.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Law) The giving of evidence on the part of a plaintiff to destroy the effect of evidence introduced by the defendant in the same suit.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The act of refuting something by making a contrary argument, or presenting contrary evidence.
• noun law A pleading by a defendant in reply to the evidence put forward by a plaintiff or the prosecution.
• noun politics A statement, designed to refute or negate specific arguments put forward by opponents.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun (law) a pleading by the defendant in reply to a plaintiff's surrejoinder
• noun the speech act of refuting by offering a contrary contention or argument