Definition
A plea of judgment recovered is a defense raised by a defendant asserting that the plaintiff has already obtained a judgment for the same relief sought in the present action. In essence, the defendant argues that the matter has already been litigated to a final judgment and that the plaintiff, having once recovered, cannot recover again for the same wrong or obligation.
The plea operates as a bar to the current action. It is closely related to, but technically distinct from, the broader doctrine of res judicata: where res judicata bars relitigation of claims that were or could have been raised, the plea of judgment recovered addresses the narrower situation where a prior judgment for the very same relief has already been entered in the plaintiff's favor.
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Common Confusion
JUDGMENT RECOVERED vs. RES JUDICATA vs. ACCORD AND SATISFACTION: These three defenses are frequently grouped together but occupy distinct doctrinal space. Res judicata extinguishes claims; judgment recovered asserts that the plaintiff has already won the specific relief now sought and should not be permitted to collect twice. Accord and satisfaction resolves a dispute by agreement and performance, not by judicial decree. A researcher encountering a plea of judgment recovered in historical pleadings should not assume it is interchangeable with either of the others, though all three serve the policy goal of finality.
JUDGMENT RECOVERED vs. FORMER RECOVERY: In older common law pleading, "former recovery" was sometimes used as a synonym and sometimes distinguished based on whether the prior proceeding reached a final judgment or merely settled. The distinction matters when evaluating the sufficiency of the plea in historical case records.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is primarily a creature of common law pleading practice and appears almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century legal materials. Researchers working in historical court records — particularly English common law reports, colonial American proceedings, or nineteenth-century state court records — will encounter it as a formal plea in the defendant's answer.
Two research traps are worth flagging. First, Bouvier's characterization of the plea as "a species of sham plea, often put in for the purpose of delaying a plaintiff's action" signals that courts viewed it with suspicion. A researcher reading a record in which this plea was entered should not assume it reflected a meritorious defense; it was frequently a dilatory tactic. Second, because modern civil procedure has largely absorbed this plea into affirmative defenses of res judicata or claim preclusion under notice pleading regimes, the term does not appear in contemporary litigation practice under this name. Searching modern databases for "judgment recovered" as a term of art will return few useful results; searching historical digests and plea books will return many.
The plea has relevance in corpus connections to post-judgment enforcement research: a researcher tracing the lifecycle of a judgment — from entry through execution and satisfaction — may encounter a plea of judgment recovered as evidence that a prior judgment existed and was known to both parties. That evidentiary function can be useful in reconstructing litigation history from incomplete records.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary shelf source for this term, and its entry is brief but pointed. Bouvier defines the plea as an assertion by the defendant "that the plaintiff has already recovered that which he seeks to obtain by his action" and identifies it as a dilatory device. The citation to "M. & W." refers to the English Exchequer reports (Meeson and Welsby), situating the plea firmly in the common law tradition of formal pleading.
What Bouvier's entry does not address is the plea's relationship to merger — the common law doctrine under which a cause of action merges into a judgment once that judgment is entered. The merger doctrine provides the theoretical foundation for why a plaintiff who has already recovered cannot sue again: the underlying claim no longer exists as an independent cause of action. Historical dictionaries generally treat judgment recovered as a pleading device without articulating this underlying principle, which can leave researchers without the analytical framework needed to evaluate how courts actually ruled on the plea.
Older English authorities, including Chitty's treatise on pleading, provide more structural detail on how the plea was framed and what it was required to allege. Researchers needing to evaluate the sufficiency of such a plea in historical records should consult Chitty alongside Bouvier.
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Jurisdictional Note
This plea belongs to common law pleading forms that were superseded in most American jurisdictions by code pleading beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and by notice pleading under modern procedural rules. Its practical relevance today is almost entirely historical. Jurisdictions that retain elements of common law pleading for specialized proceedings may still recognize the concept, but under different nomenclature.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Enforcement of Judgments — Execution, Domestication, and Post-Judgment Discovery (The Law Mind Remedies & Equity Encyclopedia)
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