Definition
A secret agreement or conspiracy between two or more persons to deceive, injure, or defraud a third party. Covin requires a shared intent formed between the parties — it is the clandestine character of the scheme, directed outward against someone not party to it, that defines the concept. The injured party has no knowledge of or participation in the arrangement.
Covin differs from ordinary fraud in that it is inherently bilateral or multilateral: a single actor deceiving another is fraud or deceit; covin requires confederates acting in concert to the prejudice of an outsider. It differs from simple conspiracy in carrying the additional implication of artifice and concealment — the "secret assent determined in the hearts of two or more," as early common law formulations expressed it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No current general English meaning recorded. The term has effectively passed out of common use and survives almost exclusively in legal and historical contexts.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "A collusive agreement between two or more persons to prejudice a third. Deceit; fraud; artifice. [Obs.]"
Webster's marks the term obsolete even by 1913. The legal meaning and the historical common meaning were once closely aligned — both described secret, harmful collusion — but the term vanished from ordinary English while persisting in legal sources well into the nineteenth century. Researchers encountering covin in historical documents should treat it as a technical legal term, not a literary archaism.
Common Confusion
Covin, collusion, and conspiracy overlap significantly and are sometimes used interchangeably in historical sources. The distinctions, where courts drew them, are as follows: collusion is the broader category, encompassing secret arrangements between parties that may or may not involve a third-party victim (it appears frequently in procedural fraud contexts, such as collusive suits); conspiracy emphasizes the agreement to commit an unlawful act, with less emphasis on artifice and concealment; covin emphasizes the secret, deceitful quality of the arrangement and its prejudicial effect on an outsider. In practice, historical pleadings and judicial opinions often used the terms without rigid differentiation. Researchers should not assume that a source using one term intended to exclude the others.
Why It Matters in Research
Covin is a term of historical legal art that largely disappeared from active legal vocabulary by the late nineteenth century. Researchers will encounter it primarily in three contexts: (1) early English common law sources and their American reception, particularly in pleading and property law; (2) Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions with strong common law heritage, where the term appeared in reported decisions through at least the mid-to-late 1800s; and (3) statutory contexts, including fraud prevention legislation.
The term presents a dating trap: its presence in a source is a reliable signal that the source is either old or is borrowing from old authority. A modern court or statute using "covin" without qualification is almost certainly quoting or paraphrasing a historical source. Do not treat historical definitions as reflecting current doctrinal usage.
Corpus researchers should cross-reference covin entries against entries for collusion, fraud, and deceit. The boundary between these concepts was actively contested in pleading practice — a declaration alleging covin rather than fraud, or vice versa, could have procedural consequences. Sources treating them as synonyms may be analytically imprecise, or may reflect a jurisdiction where the distinctions had eroded.
The Anderson's entry is notable for citing Pennsylvania-specific authority, suggesting the term had particular doctrinal longevity in that jurisdiction. Researchers working in Pennsylvania legal history should consult the Act of 25 May, 1887, referenced in that entry, for statutory context.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries converge on the core definition: covin is a secret agreement between two or more persons operating to the prejudice of a third. The formulations vary in texture. Burrill offers the oldest-sounding phrasing — "secret assent or agreement determined in the hearts of two or more" — drawn from Plowden and Coke, anchoring the term firmly in the common law tradition. Bouvier and Black (both editions) present cleaner modern paraphrases without sacrificing accuracy.
Anderson is the most practically useful for American legal history, providing both primary authority (Blackstone, Chitty) and case citations across Pennsylvania courts, suggesting the term retained doctrinal vitality in American practice longer than its absence from modern dictionaries might imply.
None of the historical dictionaries address what happened to covin as a distinct cause of action or pleading category after the procedural reforms of the mid-to-late nineteenth century — the shift from common law pleading to code pleading effectively rendered the technical distinctions between covin, fraud, and collusion less consequential. This is a gap in the historical record that researchers pursuing doctrinal history should account for independently.
Jurisdictional Note
Covin appears to have had particular staying power in Pennsylvania common law, based on the density of Pennsylvania authority in Anderson's entry. English sources — Coke, Plowden, Finch — are the deepest well. American courts outside Pennsylvania generally absorbed the concept into fraud and conspiracy doctrine without preserving covin as a distinct term. Researchers should not expect uniform treatment across jurisdictions.