Definition
De averiis retornandis (Latin: "for returning the cattle") is a Latin phrase designating the pledges required of a plaintiff in the old common law action of replevin. When a plaintiff brought replevin to recover distrained goods — typically livestock — the plaintiff was required to give security, in the form of pledges, guaranteeing that the goods would be returned to the distraining party if the plaintiff failed to establish a right to their recovery. Those pledges were said to be given de averiis retornandis: for the return of the cattle.
The phrase is purely procedural in character. It does not describe a cause of action, a substantive right, or a category of property. It identifies the specific condition attached to sureties in replevin — the obligation of return — as distinguished from pledges given for other litigation purposes.
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Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is encountered almost exclusively in historical English legal sources discussing replevin procedure before the action was reformed or replaced in most common law jurisdictions. Researchers working in early English legal records, plea rolls, or treatises on the forms of action will find it as a technical descriptor of the pledges entered in the replevin process, not as a standalone writ or independent procedural mechanism.
The term signals the pre-reform era of replevin, when the action required formal pledges from the plaintiff — sureties who answered for the return of goods if the plaintiff's claim failed. This surety requirement was a meaningful structural feature of early replevin that distinguished it from later simplified statutory forms of the action. Understanding de averiis retornandis helps researchers recognize what has been stripped away in modern replevin statutes: the ancient pledge requirement is largely vestigial or abolished in contemporary practice.
Researchers using Reeves' History of the English Law (the source cited by all three dictionary entries) will find this phrase situated within a broader discussion of the medieval forms of replevin and the procedural obligations of parties. It is not a term that generates independent caselaw; it functions as a label within doctrinal and historical narrative, not as a legal standard courts apply.
Do not expect to find this phrase in American case reports or modern English materials. Its utility is entirely backward-looking — it is a key to reading older sources correctly, not a term operative in living law.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (both editions) and Burrill's — give identical definitions and cite the same authority: 2 Reeves' History of the English Law, at page 177. The unanimity is striking but unsurprising; none of these dictionaries had reason to go beyond the same foundational treatise source on a purely historical procedural term.
Burrill's entry is marginally more informative in that it places the term in sequence alongside related Latin law phrases (de avo, de banco), confirming that the phrase belongs to a cluster of formulaic Latin expressions tied to specific old common law writs and procedures rather than to general legal principle.
What the historical dictionaries do not supply: any explanation of how the pledge requirement functioned in practice, who the pledges were, what consequences followed from a failure to return goods, or how this obligation related to the broader structure of replevin procedure. For that context, Reeves' History itself, or Glanvill and Bracton for the earliest period, must be consulted directly.
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Jurisdictional Note
De averiis retornandis is a term of English common law origin with no independent American statutory or doctrinal life. American replevin procedure, developed through state codes and later simplified further by rules-based civil procedure, dispensed with formal pledge requirements. The phrase may appear in American legal dictionaries and treatises as a historical reference but has no operative significance in any current American jurisdiction.
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