Definition
Per quod consortium amisit is a Latin phrase meaning "by which he lost her company." It describes the ground of recovery in a husband's action for damages when a third party wrongfully injures his wife so severely that he is deprived of her company, society, and domestic assistance. The action is brought by the husband in his own right — not on behalf of the wife — to compensate him for the loss he personally suffers as a consequence of the wrong done to her.
The action historically sounded in trespass on the case (an action on the case in the nature of trespass) and was distinct from any suit the wife herself might bring for her own injuries. The per quod consortium amisit averment was the pleading language that established the husband's personal injury: that as a result of the defendant's wrongful act, the husband had lost the society, comfort, and services of his wife.
Common Confusion
Per quod consortium amisit is closely related to, but distinct from, two other concepts that researchers frequently conflate:
First, it is not the same as consortium simpliciter or a general claim for loss of consortium as recognized in modern tort law. The historical action was available only to the husband; a wife had no reciprocal right at common law to sue for loss of her husband's consortium. Modern loss of consortium claims, recognized in most American jurisdictions, extend the right to both spouses — and in some jurisdictions to other family members — representing a significant doctrinal departure from the historical per quod action.
Second, per quod consortium amisit should be distinguished from per quod servitium amisit ("by which he lost her service"), the parallel action for loss of a servant's services. Though structurally identical in pleading form, the two actions arose from different relationships and carried different measures of damages. In practice, historical pleadings sometimes merged both averments — loss of company and loss of service — in a single count.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering per quod consortium amisit in historical sources must be alert to several navigational issues.
First, the phrase appears as pleading boilerplate in trespass-on-the-case declarations and may not be indexed under its Latin form. Historical reporters and digests often catalog these cases under "husband and wife," "trespass," or "damages" rather than under the Latin phrase itself.
Second, the one-directional nature of the historical right — available only to husbands — is a structural feature of common law coverture doctrine. Any source predating the late nineteenth or early twentieth century that discusses "loss of consortium" is almost certainly describing the husband's action only. Researchers using historical materials to trace the doctrine's evolution must not assume symmetry between historical and modern formulations.
Third, the action's measure of damages was contested. Because the husband recovered for loss of society and domestic assistance — not for the wife's physical injuries themselves — courts wrestled with valuation in ways that generated a distinct line of precedent worth tracing separately from the wife's personal injury action.
Fourth, in the Law Mind corpus, this term connects directly to the broader doctrinal cluster around coverture, spousal rights, and the husband's legal identity absorbing the wife's. Researchers tracing the erosion of coverture will find per quod consortium amisit cases useful as markers: jurisdictions that extended the action to wives often signaled a broader rejection of common law unity-of-person doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines the action concisely and accurately, citing Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Com. 140) and Croke Jacobi 501 as authority. Bouvier frames the action as a remedy for a husband whose wife has been "so badly beaten or ill used" that he loses "her company and assistance," recoverable in an action of trespass in the nature of an action on the case. This formulation is consistent with the classical common law treatment.
Bouvier's entry is correct as far as it goes but notably sparse. It does not address the measure of damages, the procedural relationship between the husband's per quod action and the wife's concurrent personal injury suit, or the question — actively litigated in American courts through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century — of whether the wife's own right of action would eventually displace or parallel the husband's. Researchers should not read Bouvier's silence on these points as settled law; it reflects the entry's era rather than the absence of controversy.
Jurisdictional Note
At common law the action was available only to husbands. American jurisdictions began extending loss of consortium claims to wives through judicial decision and statute across the twentieth century, with significant variation in timing, scope, and whether the extension applied to unmarried partners or other family members. Historical per quod consortium amisit precedents from American courts are therefore jurisdictionally specific; their weight in any modern loss-of-consortium analysis depends heavily on whether the relevant jurisdiction has retained, modified, or abrogated the common law framework.