Definition
An action for money is a civil lawsuit brought to recover a sum of money from a defendant. The term is broader than it first appears: it encompasses not only suits to collect a debt or liquidated sum owed by contract, but also actions seeking unliquidated monetary damages — that is, compensation for a wrong where the exact amount must be determined by the court or jury.
The phrase functions as a procedural category rather than a cause of action in itself. It describes the remedy sought (a money judgment) rather than the legal theory underlying the claim. A plaintiff suing for breach of contract, for tort, or for unjust enrichment may each be pursuing an "action for money" even though the substantive law governing each claim differs entirely.
Common Confusion
"Action for money" is sometimes loosely used as a synonym for "debt action" or "assumpsit," but the terms are not interchangeable. A debt action historically required a fixed, certain sum already owed; assumpsit extended to promises and quasi-contractual obligations. "Action for money" as a modern categorical term sweeps more broadly than either, capturing damages claims that the old forms would have treated separately. Researchers encountering the phrase in historical pleading contexts should identify which specific common-law form underlies it before drawing conclusions about procedure or limitations.
Why It Matters in Research
The critical research intelligence here is the definitional breadth. Bouvier cites a Civil Code provision — Section 732, subsection 8 — to support the proposition that "action for money" includes damages recovery, not just contractual debt recovery. This statutory gloss matters because courts and practitioners in different periods used the phrase inconsistently: some read it narrowly (only liquidated sums), others read it broadly (any monetary relief). When researching historical cases or statutes that use the phrase as a jurisdictional or procedural trigger — for example, to determine which court had cognizance, whether a jury was required, or which statute of limitations applied — the broad versus narrow reading can change the outcome entirely.
Researchers working in code-pleading jurisdictions (post-Field Code states after 1848) will find this phrase appearing in statutes that collapsed the old common-law forms of action into unified civil actions. The phrase often served as a shorthand in those codes for the combined territory formerly occupied by debt, assumpsit, and certain tort actions seeking pecuniary recovery. Do not assume the phrase carries identical scope across jurisdictions or time periods.
The encyclopedia entries on money laundering and banking law are not directly relevant to this term. "Action for money" is a private civil remedy concept, not a regulatory or criminal one.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the sole historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is brief but precise. Bouvier anchors the definition to a specific statutory provision (Civil Code § 732(8)), which is characteristic of late-nineteenth-century American legal dictionary methodology — grounding procedural categories in code sections rather than common-law tradition. The entry's most important contribution is the explicit statement that damages actions are included alongside contract debt actions, resolving any ambiguity that might arise from reading the phrase literally as limited to money already owed.
What Bouvier does not address: the phrase's relationship to equity practice (courts of equity did not traditionally entertain "actions for money" as such — they acted in personam through decree), the distinction between actions at law and suits in equity that survived in many jurisdictions well into the twentieth century, and the effect of merger of law and equity under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (1938) on the practical utility of this category. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier for modern practice would be working with an incomplete picture.
Jurisdictional Note
The term appears most frequently in code-pleading states that adopted variants of the Field Code. Its scope varied by statute: some codes defined the phrase to include only contract-based money claims, while others (as Bouvier's Civil Code reference illustrates) explicitly extended it to damages. Federal practice under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure does not use this phrase as a formal category; researchers crossing between state and federal sources should not assume terminological continuity.