Definition
Latin: "whereby" or "by which." Per quod has two distinct but related uses in Anglo-American law:
1. As a pleading term: The clause in a tort declaration that introduces the plaintiff's allegation of special damages — that is, the particular consequences flowing from the defendant's wrongful act that caused specific, provable harm. After stating what the defendant did, the pleader would recite the resulting damage introduced by the words "per quod," meaning "whereby [the plaintiff suffered the following harm]." The clause itself, as well as its function, came to be called "the per quod."
2. As a classification in defamation law: Words or conduct actionable only "per quod" require the plaintiff to plead and prove actual, special damages because the defamatory meaning or the harm is not apparent from the statement itself. This stands in contrast to statements actionable per se, which are presumed harmful without proof of specific damage. A statement is actionable per quod when it requires extrinsic facts (the "inducement" and "innuendo") to reveal its defamatory character, or when the statement falls in a category where harm is not presumed.
Common Confusion
Per quod is frequently paired with — and confused against — per se. The distinction is not merely semantic. Per se means the thing speaks for itself: the statement or act is harmful on its face, and damages may be presumed. Per quod means the harm does not speak for itself: the plaintiff must supply the connective tissue (extrinsic facts and proof of actual damage) to establish the claim. In defamation practice, the per quod/per se divide determines not just what must be pleaded but whether the action survives at all without proof of monetary loss. Researchers should be careful: historical sources use per quod primarily as a pleading term describing a clause in the declaration; its use as a substantive defamation category is largely a product of twentieth-century common law development and is not well-described in the older dictionaries.
Why It Matters in Research
The term carries different weights depending on the era and the source you are reading. In historical pleading materials — anything touching common law forms of action before code pleading reforms — per quod is a technical term of pleading craft, describing the formal structure of the declaration. In that context, the researcher's task is understanding how special damage was alleged and why the clause mattered procedurally.
In modern defamation research, per quod functions as a substantive legal classification that determines the contours of a plaintiff's burden. These are related but not identical uses, and conflating them produces analytical errors. A nineteenth-century treatise discussing "per quod" almost certainly means the pleading clause; a twentieth-century court opinion discussing "per quod" in a defamation case is likely classifying the type of actionable statement.
The connection to the inducement and innuendo is critical for defamation researchers. When words are actionable per quod, the pleader must set out the extrinsic facts (the inducement) that give the words their defamatory meaning, and then allege specifically how the words carried that meaning (the innuendo). Without these, the per quod claim fails at the pleading stage. Researchers tracing defamation doctrine should look for these companion terms together.
Corpus researchers should also note that per quod survives as living doctrine in jurisdictions that have preserved the common law defamation framework, but its precise application — particularly which categories of statements require per quod proof versus triggering per se presumptions — varies substantially across states. This variation is not well-captured in the historical dictionaries, which describe the pleading mechanics but not the substantive classification that evolved later.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four shelf sources agree on the core: per quod introduces the consequences of the defendant's wrongful act and identifies the special damage flowing from those acts. Burrill is the most technically precise, describing the clause as introducing "a consequence of law from matters of fact before stated" — a useful formulation that captures both the causal and the legal-consequence functions of the clause. Rapalje and Lawrence correctly situates per quod within slander pleading and cross-references the discussion of special damage, which is the most practically useful pointer for researchers in defamation doctrine.
Black's (both editions) limits its treatment to the tort declaration context and does not address the substantive per quod/per se classification in defamation — reflecting the state of doctrine at the time of those editions. None of the historical sources addresses the constitutional dimensions that later emerged around presumed damages in defamation, which significantly affects how per quod operates in modern First Amendment-influenced defamation law. Researchers relying solely on these sources will have an accurate but incomplete picture.
Jurisdictional Note
The per quod/per se distinction in defamation retains practical significance in states applying common law defamation rules, but the specific categories of statements treated as per se (and therefore not requiring per quod proof of damage) differ by jurisdiction. The First Amendment overlay — particularly following the constitutional limits on presumed and punitive damages in cases involving matters of public concern — has further complicated the picture in ways the historical dictionaries cannot anticipate.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia: Defamation and Privacy Torts — Defamation — Defamation Per Se Categories (torts_123) — primary reference for the per quod/per se classification and its pleading consequences in defamation.