Definition
Ceived is an archaic abbreviated or clipped form of "received," appearing in older pleading practice as part of the common count for money had and received. In the context of early common law declarations, the term appears in indebitatus assumpsit pleadings where a plaintiff alleged that the defendant had "received" money belonging to the plaintiff or money paid for the defendant's use. The word functions as a technical shorthand embedded in formulaic pleading language rather than as a term of independent legal significance.
The practical meaning tracks the full form: money paid by the plaintiff for the use of the defendant and at his request. The count was a flexible quasi-contractual remedy allowing recovery of funds in circumstances where equity and conscience demanded restitution, even without a formal express contract.
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Common Confusion
CEIVED should not be treated as a standalone legal term with its own doctrine. It is a vestige of abbreviated pleading forms — manuscript contractions or printer's conventions common in early English law reports and precedent books. Researchers encountering "ceived" in historical pleadings or case reports should read it as "received" and analyze the substantive count accordingly (money had and received, or money paid for use of defendant). Confusing the abbreviation for a term of art would lead a researcher away from the governing doctrine, which lies in the law of quasi-contract and indebitatus assumpsit.
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Why It Matters in Research
The primary research value here is recognizing and correctly decoding the form. Historical pleading records, early English reports, and printed precedent books routinely used contractions and clipped spellings — partly as manuscript conventions, partly as space-saving measures in print. Encountering "ceived" in a declaration or precedent form is almost certainly an instance of this practice.
Bouvier links the form directly to the money paid count: "money paid by the plaintiff for the use of the defendant and at his request" (citing 1 M. & W. 511, Meeson & Welsby's Exchequer Reports). This count was one of the standard common counts in assumpsit. When researching quasi-contractual claims, implied assumpsit, or the common counts in Law Mind's historical corpus, the term points you toward:
1. The indebitatus assumpsit framework — where the plaintiff need not prove an express promise but relies on an implied promise raised by law.
2. The money paid count specifically — distinct from the money had and received count, though both fall under the common counts umbrella.
3. English Exchequer and common pleas practice — the M. & W. citation roots this form in mid-19th century English practice, which was influential on American common law pleading before code pleading reforms displaced the common counts.
Researchers using pre-code American or English pleading materials should be alert to similar abbreviations throughout. The substance behind the form — unjust enrichment, quasi-contract, restitution — remains doctrinally live even where the pleading forms are long obsolete.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the sole source in the Law Mind corpus treating this term, and its entry is brief and functional: it provides the pleading formula and a single citation to Meeson & Welsby. Bouvier does not define "ceived" as a concept; instead, he uses it as a label for the pleading form itself, which suggests that practitioners of the period would have immediately recognized it as shorthand.
No other historical dictionaries in the standard reference shelf (Black's, Tomlin's, Jacob's, Cunningham's) appear to carry a discrete entry for "ceived," which further confirms that it was understood as a practical scribal or typographic convention rather than a term requiring doctrinal exposition. The gap in coverage is itself informative: the term lived in the forms books and the pleader's practice, not in the treatises.
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Jurisdictional Note
The common counts, including the money paid count underlying this form, were adopted broadly in American common law jurisdictions before code pleading reforms (beginning with the New York Field Code of 1848) rendered them obsolete as formal pleading vehicles. The substantive doctrine they carried — quasi-contract and unjust enrichment — survived the procedural reform and continues in modern law under those labels.
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