Definition
A particular statement is a procedural pleading document used in Pennsylvania civil practice, required by statute, in which a plaintiff specifically identifies the instruments or transactions underlying the action and states the amount claimed to be due from the defendant. It functions as a precursor to, or substitute for, a formal declaration, providing the defendant with detailed notice of the precise grounds of the claim.
The particular statement must specify the date of each promise, book-account, note, bond (penal or single), bill, or other instrument upon which the action is founded, along with the plaintiff's belief as to the sum owed. It is described in Bouvier's as "an unmethodical declaration" — meaning it delivers the functional content of a formal declaration without adhering to the technical pleading structure common law courts otherwise required.
The requirement derives from a Pennsylvania statute of March 21, 1806 (4 Sm. Pa. Laws 328), which reflected the broader early American reform impulse to simplify pleading in common commercial actions and reduce the technical burden on parties who were often non-lawyers or small creditors.
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Common Confusion
The particular statement should not be confused with a bill of particulars, though the two serve overlapping functions. A bill of particulars is ordered by a court to clarify an already-filed pleading; a particular statement is filed at the outset as the primary pleading instrument initiating the claim or defining its scope. The particular statement is also distinct from a formal declaration: a declaration follows strict common law pleading forms, while the particular statement was designed precisely to relax those formalities within Pennsylvania's statutory framework.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is nearly exclusively a Pennsylvania procedural artifact of the early nineteenth century. Researchers will encounter it almost entirely in:
1. **Pennsylvania case reporters from roughly 1806 through the mid-nineteenth century**, particularly in the Sergeant & Rawle (S. & R.) series. The citation in Bouvier's — 6 S. & R. 21 — anchors the term in that corpus.
2. **Annotated editions of Pennsylvania statutes** from the same period, especially compilations of Smith's Laws of Pennsylvania. Researchers working with pre-codification Pennsylvania civil practice must understand that what modern practice would call a complaint or a bill of particulars might appear in these sources as a "particular statement."
3. **Treatises on Pennsylvania practice**, where the term appears as a technical term of art without explanation, assuming reader familiarity with the 1806 statute.
The principal trap for researchers: because the term uses common English words ("particular" and "statement"), it can be mistaken for a descriptive phrase rather than a recognized procedural instrument. In context, however, it always refers to the specific statutory filing, not to any statement that happens to be particular or detailed.
The term has no meaningful modern survival. Pennsylvania's adoption of fact pleading and, later, code pleading and rules-based civil procedure rendered the particular statement obsolete as a formal category. Researchers should not expect to find it in twentieth-century sources except in historical or comparative discussions of Pennsylvania pleading history.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is the primary source for this term, and its entry is characteristically precise about the jurisdictional and statutory context: Pennsylvania practice only, under the Act of March 21, 1806. The description of the document as "an unmethodical declaration" is a useful characterization — it signals that the particular statement was understood by contemporaries as functionally equivalent to a declaration but free of its formal requirements. Bouvier anchors the definition to 6 S. & R. 21 and 4 Sm. Pa. Laws 328, both verifiable Pennsylvania primary sources.
No other major historical legal dictionaries (Black's, Wharton's) give the particular statement substantial treatment, reflecting its narrow jurisdictional footprint. This makes Bouvier's — and the Pennsylvania reporters directly — essentially the only reliable historical sources. Researchers relying on non-Pennsylvania dictionaries of the period will find the term absent or underexplained.
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Jurisdictional Note
Strictly a Pennsylvania term. The particular statement has no recognized equivalent in the common law pleading systems of other American states or in English practice. Researchers working in other jurisdictions who encounter the phrase should treat it as descriptive rather than technical unless the document is clearly in a Pennsylvania legal context.
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