Definition
A Latin pleading phrase meaning "for this that" or "for the fact that." Used in common law pleading to introduce a material averment — that is, a factual allegation that is essential to the legal claim or defense being stated. The phrase functions as an affirmative, declaratory connector, signaling to the court that what follows is a positive assertion of fact rather than a conditional or qualified statement. Its force was precisely its directness: courts and treatise writers recognized it as sufficiently definite to satisfy the requirement that material facts be pleaded with clarity and affirmation.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs squarely to the world of common law pleading and will appear almost exclusively in pre-code sources — English reports, early American decisions, and pleading treatises from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Researchers encountering the phrase in an old declaration, plea, or replication should understand it as a structural marker: what follows is the heart of the factual allegation the pleader is staking their case on.
The phrase's significance is almost entirely historical. The Field Code reforms beginning in 1848, and the later adoption of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938, swept away the technical apparatus of common law pleading in American practice. Modern pleading rules require a "short and plain statement" of the claim; the stylized Latin connectors of the old forms have no place in contemporary practice and no modern equivalent that carries legal significance.
Researchers using Law Mind's historical corpus should watch for this term in pleading precedents — the form books and precedent collections that guided practitioners in drafting writs and declarations. It will also appear in commentary on what counted as a sufficient averment under the old rules. When tracing a pleading dispute in historical case law, the presence or absence of pro eo quod in a declaration could itself have been a point of contention, since defective averment was a recognized ground for demurrer.
The Wiktionary entry for this phrase is essentially unhelpful, offering only the context label "in pleading" with no substantive content. Researchers should rely on the primary treatise sources referenced in the historical dictionary entries.
Historical Dictionary Support
Both editions of Black's Law Dictionary treat the phrase consistently, defining it as a pleading term of affirmation used to introduce material averments. The first edition cross-references 1 Saunders 117 and Chitty on Pleading at pages 369–393; the second edition cross-references the same Saunders citation and extends the Chitty citation to pages 369–398, suggesting the second edition drew on a later or fuller edition of Chitty's work.
The second edition also appends a separate but adjacent entry — pro falso clamore suo — a nominal amercement of a plaintiff for a false claim, explicitly labeled obsolete. This adjacency in the source is incidental; the two phrases are unrelated in substance. Researchers should not conflate them.
Neither edition of Black's provides meaningful analytical commentary beyond the basic definition. The real depth on this phrase lives in the treatise literature it cites: Chitty's Pleadings and the reports in Saunders. Anyone researching the mechanics of material averment in common law pleading will need to go to those primary sources. Black's here is an index, not an authority.
The phrase also illustrates a broader feature of Latin pleading vocabulary: many such terms were terms of art in the strict sense, carrying precise procedural weight that would have been apparent to trained pleaders but is now opaque without context. Pro eo quod was not decorative Latin; its placement in a pleading had technical consequences.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase was a feature of English common law pleading and was carried into early American practice across jurisdictions. Its relevance is now entirely historical. No modern American jurisdiction uses common law pleading forms, so the term has no current operative jurisdictional significance.