Definition
Latin: "whereby he lost the service [of his servant]." A phrase drawn from old common law pleading, used in declarations in actions of trespass brought by a master against a third party who had beaten, injured, or otherwise disabled the master's servant, causing the master to lose the benefit of that servant's labor and service.
The phrase functioned as a pleading device to describe the special damage sustained by the master — the loss of service — as distinct from the injury suffered by the servant personally. Because the master had no action for the servant's pain or suffering, the per quod servitium amisit allegation was the legal mechanism by which the master established his own compensable harm. Without it, the declaration lacked a ground for the master's recovery.
By extension, the phrase and the doctrine it represented became the standard vehicle for a related and ultimately more common action: a father's suit for the seduction of his daughter. Since a daughter could not herself sue for seduction under the old common law, the father brought the action in his capacity as master, with his daughter treated fictionally as his servant. The per quod allegation — loss of service — supplied the necessary legal injury to the father, even when the actual domestic service was minimal or wholly notional.
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Common Confusion
The phrase is sometimes treated as a general description of consequential damage pleading, but it carries a more specific meaning: it refers to the master-servant (or father-daughter) relationship and the loss of service therefrom. It should not be confused with the separate Latin pleading phrase per quod consortium amisit, which describes a husband's loss of consortium following injury to his wife. Both phrases serve the same structural function — alleging special damage personal to the plaintiff rather than the injured party — but they operate in distinct relational contexts and gave rise to different lines of authority.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is an archaic pleading term with a long tail. Researchers encounter it in three distinct contexts, and conflating them causes confusion.
First, in pure pleading history: the phrase appears in treatises and early case law as a formal requirement of the old trespass declaration. Understanding that it was a term of art describing the master's special damage — not the servant's injury — is essential when reading pre-nineteenth-century English and American cases.
Second, in the history of seduction law: the per quod servitium amisit doctrine was the legal fiction that made father-for-daughter seduction actions possible at common law. Research into seduction as a civil wrong, parental rights of action, or the history of sexual harm torts will run directly through this phrase. Many nineteenth-century American cases turn on whether the father could establish sufficient "service" by the daughter to support the fiction. Researchers should note that the sufficiency of nominal service was contested across jurisdictions and across time.
Third, in the broader history of loss of consortium and loss of services claims: the master-servant action is the doctrinal ancestor of modern spousal consortium claims. Tracing that lineage requires understanding per quod servitium amisit as the template from which per quod consortium amisit was later derived by analogy.
Trap for researchers: historical sources vary in how they handle the gender of the servant. Black's 1st edition speaks of "his servant" in a generic sense; Bouvier and Rapalje more explicitly address the daughter/seduction variant and use "her." This inconsistency in the sources reflects real doctrinal ambiguity about how broadly the fiction extended.
The phrase does not appear in modern pleading codes and has no current operative force as a pleading requirement in any American jurisdiction. Encountering it in a modern opinion typically signals either a historical survey or an argument about the doctrinal roots of a loss-of-services or consortium claim.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the core meaning with unusual consistency: per quod servitium amisit is a phrase from old pleading, descriptive of the master's special damage in a trespass action arising from harm to a servant. Black's 1st and 2nd editions, Burrill, and Bouvier all trace the phrase to Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Comm. 142) and to Coke (9 Co. 113a), and none fabricates a broader meaning.
The dictionaries diverge slightly in emphasis. Burrill and Black's 1st edition treat it primarily as a pleading formula and say little about its application to seduction cases. Bouvier is the most instructive on the seduction application, stating plainly that "this action is commonly brought by the father for the seduction of his daughter" — a frank acknowledgment that the servant fiction had become the normal vehicle for what was functionally a different kind of claim. Rapalje similarly cross-references SEDUCTION explicitly.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the doctrinal strain that built up around the fiction as courts in the nineteenth century were called upon to decide what level of service, if any, was actually required. They present the rule without its contested application. Researchers relying solely on these dictionary entries will need to supplement with case law to understand how the doctrine actually operated in practice.
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Jurisdictional Note
The action was inherited by American courts from English common law and appeared across multiple jurisdictions in the nineteenth century, particularly in seduction cases. American courts varied in how strictly they required actual domestic service by the daughter before the father could recover. Some accepted purely nominal service; others required evidence of real household contribution. The action has been abolished or superseded by statute in most American jurisdictions, either through seduction statutes, wrongful death acts, or the general elimination of loss-of-services claims.
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