Definition
A French commercial law expression meaning "for collection" or "for recovery." When an indorsement on a bill of exchange is made *en recouvrement*, it does not transfer ownership of the instrument to the indorsee. Instead, it confers only a limited authority: the indorsee may present the bill and collect its proceeds, but does so as agent or mandatory for the indorser, not as holder in his own right. The property in the bill remains with the indorser.
This type of indorsement is functionally a collection mandate rather than a transfer of title, and its legal effect differs fundamentally from an ordinary negotiation indorsement.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No entry. The phrase does not appear in general English usage.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): No entry. The phrase was treated as a term of French commercial law, not naturalized into English.
The phrase is pure technical vocabulary borrowed from French mercantile practice. English common law developed parallel concepts under different terminology, meaning researchers cannot assume that Anglo-American sources will discuss this doctrine under this name.
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Common Confusion
EN RECOUVREMENT vs. INDORSEMENT IN FULL / SPECIAL INDORSEMENT: An ordinary special indorsement transfers property in the instrument to the named indorsee, who then holds the bill in his own right and may sue on it in his own name. An *en recouvrement* indorsement transfers no property; the indorsee's authority is limited to collection for the account of the indorser. The distinction carries significant consequences for who bears the risk of the drawee's insolvency and who may maintain an action on the instrument.
EN RECOUVREMENT vs. INDORSEMENT FOR COLLECTION (modern UCC usage): Modern Anglo-American commercial law recognizes "restrictive indorsements" — including indorsements "for collection" or "for deposit" — that achieve a similar limitation on transfer. Researchers should not assume that historical French *en recouvrement* doctrine maps perfectly onto UCC Article 3 restrictive indorsement rules; the theoretical foundations and downstream consequences differ.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical sources treating French or Continental commercial law, and in Anglo-American treatises that surveyed comparative mercantile practice — particularly works dealing with bills of exchange from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Researchers will encounter it most often in:
- Treatises on the law of bills of exchange that drew on French mercantile authority (including works by Beawes, Chitty, and their successors who cited French practice to fill gaps in common law);
- Comparative commercial law scholarship predating the codification of negotiable instruments law in common law jurisdictions;
- Conflict-of-laws analyses where the indorsement was made in France or under French law and enforcement was sought elsewhere.
Because the term belongs to a pre-codification French commercial framework, it will rarely appear in post-twentieth-century Anglo-American case law or statutes. A researcher finding this phrase in a historical document should treat it as a signal that the instrument or transaction was being analyzed under French mercantile rules — or that the author was drawing on French authority to explain a concept for which English law had no settled vocabulary at the time of writing.
The page reference in the second edition of Black's (508) differs from the first edition (558), suggesting the editors worked from the same underlying source — *Argou's Introduction au Droit François* or a derivative work on French mercantile law — but consulted different printings. Neither edition provides the full title or author, so researchers tracing the original authority should identify the correct edition of Argou before relying on the page citation.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary define the term consistently: an indorsement *en recouvrement* creates authority to recover without transferring property in the bill. The first edition omits the clarifying phrase "In French law" that the second edition includes — a minor but meaningful addition that makes explicit what the first edition left implicit: this is a term of French, not English, commercial law.
Neither edition elaborates on the practical consequences of such an indorsement (risk allocation, the indorsee's capacity to sue, duties of remittance), nor do they situate the concept within the broader French law of mandate (*mandat*), which is the theoretical home of this arrangement. Researchers needing more than a definitional foothold should consult primary French commercial sources or comparative treatises of the period.
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Jurisdictional Note
*En recouvrement* is a term of French commercial law and has no direct statutory counterpart in common law jurisdictions. Its closest functional analog in modern American law is the restrictive indorsement under UCC Article 3, but the doctrinal frameworks are not identical. In jurisdictions following the Bills of Exchange Act 1882 (United Kingdom, Canada, Australia), restrictive indorsements are expressly addressed, but again without direct adoption of the French terminology or doctrine.
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