Definition
Champerty is an agreement by which a third party — someone with no legitimate interest in a lawsuit — finances or assists one of the parties to the litigation in exchange for a share of whatever is recovered if the suit succeeds. The arrangement is considered a species of maintenance (the broader offense of intermeddling in another's litigation), but champerty is distinguished by the contingent-share element: the outside party does not merely support the suit, but bargains for a portion of the proceeds as the price of that support. Historically treated as both a criminal offense and a ground for voiding contracts, champerty's core concern is that speculative outside interests will corrupt litigation by fostering frivolous suits and allowing strangers to profit from disputes not properly their own.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The investing of money into a third party's lawsuit in which one has no vested interest.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The prosecution or defense of a suit, whether by furnishing money or personal services, by one who has no legitimate concern therein, in consideration of an agreement that he shall receive, in the event of success, a share of the matter in suit; maintenance with the addition of an agreement for a share of the thing in dispute.
The common definitions are reasonably close to the legal meaning, but both understate the doctrinal weight of the term. Champerty was not merely a description of a transaction — it was a named legal offense that rendered the underlying agreement void and, at common law, exposed the champertor to criminal liability. The modern Wiktionary definition, by framing it as mere "investing," strips away the centuries of opprobrium attached to the doctrine and obscures why it remains legally significant today.
Common Confusion
CHAMPERTY, MAINTENANCE, AND BARRATRY
These three offenses form a cluster and are frequently conflated. Maintenance is the broadest: officious intermeddling in another's lawsuit by providing assistance without legal justification, regardless of any share arrangement. Champerty is a specific form of maintenance in which the intermeddler bargains for a portion of the recovery — maintenance plus a contingent-share agreement. Barratry involves the habitual stirring up of groundless suits or quarrels, targeting the serial offender rather than a single transaction. A champertor commits maintenance; a maintainer does not necessarily commit champerty.
Core Elements
For a champertous agreement to be established at common law, the following elements were typically required:
1. A stranger to the litigation — a party with no pre-existing legal interest in the subject matter or outcome.
2. An agreement to finance, carry on, or assist in the prosecution or defense of a suit.
3. A contingent interest — the outside party receives a share of the land, money, or other subject matter recovered only if the suit succeeds.
4. The share must come from the thing in dispute itself, not merely a fee for services rendered.
The contingent-share-from-the-recovery element is what separates champerty from ordinary maintenance. Attorney contingency fee arrangements have historically occupied an uncomfortable proximity to this definition, and courts developed specific carve-outs to distinguish them.
Why It Matters in Research
Champerty is a term that has undergone dramatic doctrinal transformation and a researcher must calibrate sources carefully to historical period and jurisdiction.
In the historical corpus, champerty is treated as a serious common-law offense — both criminal and a basis for voiding contracts. Sources from the nineteenth century and earlier should be read with this criminal-offense framing in mind. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American courts were increasingly reluctant to enforce criminal champerty statutes, and the offense quietly decriminalized in many states. What remained was the civil doctrine: champertous agreements were void as against public policy.
The modern landscape has fractured significantly. The rise of commercial litigation finance — third-party funders bankrolling lawsuits in exchange for a share of proceeds — has placed champerty doctrine under direct pressure. Several jurisdictions have abolished or substantially restricted the doctrine, while others have preserved it with considerable force. A researcher using the historical dictionaries to understand contemporary third-party litigation funding will find the historical sources essential for framing but unreliable as a guide to current law.
The attorney contingency fee is the most important practical boundary. Courts consistently distinguish the contingency fee arrangement (an attorney sharing risk with a client) from champerty (an outside stranger acquiring an interest in the litigation). The historical sources do not always draw this line cleanly, and some nineteenth-century commentary treated contingency fees with deep suspicion for precisely this reason.
When researching in the Law Mind corpus, note that entries touching maintenance and champerty frequently appear together. Cases and commentary on barratry will often provide important context on the policy rationale. Sources on assignment of choses in action also intersect, since champerty doctrine was sometimes invoked to police assignments that were viewed as speculative litigation purchases.
Historical Dictionary Support
The primary historical dictionary entries are consistent in their core formulation. Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) provide the clearest and most reliable definitions, both centering on the stranger-to-the-suit who undertakes litigation at personal cost and risk in exchange for a share of the subject matter recovered. Black's 2nd edition reproduces this formulation and supplements it with case citations, including Small v. Mott and Jewel v. Neidy, confirming that the definition was stable across the American common-law period.
Webster's 1913 is unusually informative on this term. Its primary entry correctly identifies the contingent-share structure and explicitly connects champerty to maintenance as the broader category. Its secondary note — "partnership in power; equal share of authority [Obs.]" with a quotation from Chaucer — reveals that the term once carried a broader sense of shared dominion or co-equal power, a usage that had already become obsolete by the nineteenth century. This historical note has no practical legal significance today but is useful for researchers working with very early sources.
The Bouvier's and Rapalje & Lawrence entries provided in the source material do not contain substantive champerty definitions — they appear to be misaligned source extracts relating to entry, adverse possession, and jury challenges respectively. Researchers should consult Bouvier's directly for its treatment of champerty, where it historically appears alongside maintenance and barratry with substantive discussion of the policy rationale.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law similarly did not yield a champerty-specific extract in the source material provided.
Jurisdictional Note
Champerty doctrine varies substantially by jurisdiction. England abolished champerty and maintenance as crimes by statute in 1967, though the civil doctrine survived in modified form. In the United States, many states have abolished the criminal offense while preserving the contract-voiding rule as a matter of public policy, but a significant number of states — including New York, in certain contexts — maintain the doctrine with ongoing vitality. Several jurisdictions have enacted or are developing specific statutes governing third-party litigation finance that effectively displace the common-law champerty analysis. Researchers should not assume that historical formulations map onto current law without jurisdiction-specific verification.