Definition
A chose in action is a right to personal property that the owner cannot presently possess or enjoy directly, but can only claim or enforce through legal action. The right itself — to recover a debt, demand payment, or obtain damages — is treated as a form of property, even though no physical thing is in hand.
The core idea: ownership and possession are separated. The owner has a legal right that must be "reduced to possession" through a lawsuit or other legal proceeding before it becomes tangible value. A promissory note, an unpaid debt, a breach-of-contract claim, an insurance policy benefit — all are classic choses in action.
To be distinguished from a chose in possession, which is tangible personal property the owner already holds and enjoys directly.
Common Language
Wiktionary: "Property, especially intangible ones, that can only be claimed or enforced by legal action."
This is accurate as far as it goes, but the everyday reader may miss the key structural point: a chose in action is not merely intangible property — it is specifically a right that requires legal action to convert into actual possession or payment. The colloquial phrase "things you can sue for" captures the surface meaning but loses the property-law framing that makes choses in action assignable, heritable, and commercially transferable assets in their own right.
Common Confusion
Chose in action vs. chose in possession: The distinction is foundational in personal property law. A chose in possession is something physically held — a book, a horse, a coin. A chose in action is the right to something not yet possessed — a debt owed, a contract right, a claim for damages. Researchers encountering 18th- and 19th-century texts must watch carefully: the line between the two categories was contested, and courts sometimes drew it differently for purposes of assignment, bankruptcy, or succession.
Chose in action vs. intangible property generally: Not all intangible property is a chose in action. A patent or trademark, for example, is intangible but may be possessed (through use and license) without litigation. A chose in action specifically requires action to enforce.
Core Elements
To qualify as a chose in action at common law, the following conditions were typically present:
1. Personal right: The right pertains to personal property (not real property), belonging to an identifiable owner.
2. Non-possession: The owner does not currently hold or enjoy the thing itself — only a right to it.
3. Enforceable by suit: The right can only be realized through a legal proceeding — an action at law or, in equity, a suit to compel performance or payment.
4. Pre-existing entitlement: The right arises from contract, debt, or a tort connected with contract — not from future speculation.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Historical and doctrinal sources recognize the following principal categories:
— Debt claims: Money owed under a bond, note, simple contract, or account stated.
— Contract rights: Rights to performance or damages arising from breach of an executory contract.
— Tort claims connected with contract: Claims for damages where the underlying obligation is contractual.
— Equitable choses in action: Rights enforceable only in equity — trusts, legacies, and certain beneficiary interests — which courts of equity treated as assignable and heritable even when common law would not.
— Statutory choses in action: Rights created by statute (tax refunds, judgment debts, statutory penalties) that courts have classified under the broader chose-in-action umbrella.
Why It Matters in Research
Assignment rules are the critical variable across time and jurisdiction. At early common law, choses in action were not assignable — the rule against assignment was designed to prevent the purchase of lawsuits (maintenance and champerty concerns). Researchers using pre-19th-century sources will find this non-assignability stated as absolute doctrine. By the 19th century, equity had substantially eroded the rule, permitting assignment of most choses in action in equity while the legal form required the original owner to remain the nominal plaintiff. Modern law and the UCC have eliminated most of the restriction for commercial choses.
This evolution means a passage from Blackstone, Coke, or early American reports describing a chose in action as "not assignable" is not wrong for its time — but is directly contradicted by modern doctrine. Researchers must anchor dates carefully.
Bankruptcy and insolvency research: Choses in action form a significant part of the estate in bankruptcy. Historical sources treating the vesting of choses in action in trustees or administrators will appear frequently; the rules shifted considerably between 19th-century equity practice and modern statutory bankruptcy.
Corpus connections: The term appears densely in contract-law materials, commercial paper, insurance law (policy benefits as choses in action), and succession (whether a chose in action survives to heirs or administrators). Cross-search under "things in action," the English equivalent, when working in pre-20th-century British-derived sources.
Equitable assignment doctrine: The gap between legal and equitable treatment of choses in action produced a large body of equity jurisprudence on priority, notice, and the rights of assignees. This material sits in Chancery and equity digests, not common-law reporters — a research trap for those searching only law-side materials.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the core definition but illuminate it from different angles.
Blackstone, as quoted in both Black's editions and Burrill, frames the concept as "a right to personal things of which the owner has not the possession, but merely a right of action for their possession" (2 Bl. Comm. 389, 397). This formulation anchors the term in the possession/action dichotomy and remains the most-cited classical definition.
Burrill adds Kent's Commentaries: "a personal right, not reduced to possession, but recoverable by suit at law" — a cleaner restatement that emphasizes the enforceability dimension. Burrill also notes that money due on a bond or note is the paradigm case: "a property in the money vests whenever the debt is contracted, though the possession is not obtained till recovered by action."
Bouvier provides the most practically useful historical note: the common-law non-assignability rule ("10 Co. 47, 48"), the erosion of that rule in the United States through express promises by debtors to assignees, and the procedural consequence — that without an express promise, an assignee in early American practice typically had to sue in the original creditor's name. This is operationally important for researchers reading antebellum American decisions.
What the historical sources collectively underemphasize: the breadth of the modern category. Burrill and Bouvier work primarily from debt and contract examples; they do not fully anticipate the later extension of "chose in action" to cover securities, insurance rights, intellectual property claims, and statutory entitlements that dominate 20th- and 21st-century usage.
Jurisdictional Note
The assignability of choses in action and the procedural rules for suit by assignees vary by state and by era. English practice, early American practice, and modern UCC-governed commercial law occupy distinct positions. Researchers working in pre-Civil War American materials should expect to find state-specific rules on whether an assignee could sue in their own name — a question that turns partly on whether the assignment was of a legal or equitable chose.