Definition
In common law pleading, money counts are a species of common counts used in an action of assumpsit. They are standardized, shorthand forms of pleading designed to permit recovery of a debt arising from a simple contract, whether express or implied, where the ultimate obligation owed is the payment of money. Rather than pleading the underlying transaction in detail, the plaintiff invokes one or more of these established count forms, which the law treats as adequate to support a judgment if proven.
The money counts traditionally encompass four principal forms:
1. Indebitatus assumpsit counts — allegations that the defendant was indebted to the plaintiff for money lent and advanced, for money paid and expended on the defendant's behalf, or for money had and received by the defendant for the plaintiff's use. Each sub-form targets a slightly different factual posture of indebtedness.
2. Quantum meruit — a count for the reasonable value of services rendered by the plaintiff at the defendant's request, where no fixed price was agreed upon.
3. Quantum valebant — the parallel count for goods sold and delivered, claiming their reasonable value where no specific price was set.
4. Account stated (insimul computassent) — a count alleging that the parties had settled and agreed upon the balance due between them, making that agreed sum immediately recoverable without relitigating the underlying transactions.
Together, these four forms constitute the money counts. Some authorities use the term more narrowly — Black's and Burrill's, for instance, treat money counts as comprising the indebitatus assumpsit sub-counts plus the account stated, omitting quantum meruit and quantum valebant as conceptually distinct. Bouvier's takes the broader view that all four are properly grouped under the money counts rubric. Both usages appear in historical sources, and researchers should not assume uniformity.
Common Confusion
Money counts are often used interchangeably with common counts in legal literature, and the terms substantially overlap. The distinction, where courts and commentators draw one, is that common counts is the broader category, of which money counts are the core subset focused on monetary debts. A few authorities — particularly Bouvier's — treat the terms as essentially synonymous in the assumpsit context. Researchers working across jurisdictions and periods will encounter both terms applied to the same pleading forms.
Money counts should not be confused with the count in the criminal indictment sense. The word "count" in money counts refers to a distinct pleading unit within a civil declaration, not a criminal charge.
Why It Matters in Research
Money counts belong to the architecture of common law pleading as it existed before the code pleading reforms of the mid-nineteenth century — chiefly the Field Code of 1848 in New York and its progeny, followed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938. Once fact pleading replaced the common count system, money counts lost their operative function in most American courts. A researcher encountering money counts in sources prior to roughly 1850 is dealing with live procedural doctrine; in post-code sources, the term appears almost exclusively in historical commentary, treatise discussion, or cases construing pre-code rights.
The practical trap: the underlying substantive theories — unjust enrichment, money had and received, quantum meruit — survived the death of the pleading forms that housed them. Modern courts routinely apply these doctrines under different procedural labels. Researchers tracking unjust enrichment, restitution, or implied contract claims across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries must recognize that the disappearance of the phrase "money counts" from pleadings does not signal the disappearance of the underlying cause of action.
Jurisdictional timing matters significantly. English common law courts retained elements of the old forms longer than most American states. Some states abolished common counts piecemeal rather than wholesale. Others retained them in courts of limited jurisdiction or for specific debt collection actions well into the twentieth century. Corpus searches will surface the term with very different frequencies depending on the jurisdiction and period of the source.
Researchers should also note that the account stated sub-count — the insimul computassent — has an independent doctrinal life that persists in modern law. Account stated is still pleaded as a separate cause of action in many jurisdictions. A corpus search on money counts that does not also capture account stated as a standalone modern term will miss a significant body of relevant authority.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition. Black's and Burrill's track each other almost verbatim — both citing 1 Burrill's Practice at page 132 — and define money counts narrowly as the indebitatus assumpsit sub-counts plus the account stated. Rapalje & Lawrence aligns with this narrower characterization, emphasizing the indebitatus formulation and cross-referencing common counts without attempting an exhaustive list. Bouvier's takes the most comprehensive view, expressly cataloguing all four traditional forms — indebitatus assumpsit, quantum meruit, quantum valebant, and account stated — as money counts, and offering the organizing rationale: these counts are founded on express or implied promises to pay money in consideration of a precedent debt.
The Bouvier's entry adds a nuance the others do not flag: a plaintiff could not normally resort to an implied promise where an express contract existed governing the same subject matter. This limitation on election of remedies — left incomplete in the printed entry — was a genuine doctrinal constraint that practitioners navigating the common count system had to observe. Black's and Burrill's, as reference dictionaries rather than practice manuals, do not develop this point.
No historical source surveyed here explains the transition away from money counts or places the forms in the context of the code pleading revolution. That silence is characteristic of mid-nineteenth century legal dictionaries compiled at or just before the cusp of those reforms. Researchers should treat these definitions as descriptions of a fully operational system and supply the historical endpoint themselves.
Jurisdictional Note
Money counts as active pleading forms were effectively abolished in federal practice in 1938 and in most states between roughly 1848 and 1900, depending on when each jurisdiction adopted code pleading. A handful of states were slower to modernize civil procedure, and some local court systems retained simplified debt-collection forms bearing functional resemblance to the old money counts into the twentieth century. English courts of common law used the forms until the Judicature Acts of the 1870s restructured the English civil procedure system.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses common law pleading or the money counts system. The matching entries returned — Money Laundering, Purchase Money Mortgages, and Bank Secrecy Act — share the word "money" but are substantively unrelated to this term. No encyclopedia cross-reference is warranted.