Definition
A Latin phrase used in early English legal practice meaning "for his costs and charges." The term appears in pleading and procedural contexts to describe the basis or purpose of an award, judgment, or recovery directed at compensating a party for the expenses and costs incurred in litigation or in connection with a legal obligation. It functioned as a formulaic recitation in writs, judgments, and court orders, signaling that the relief granted was specifically oriented toward reimbursing a party's expenditures rather than compensating for substantive injury or underlying loss.
Why It Matters in Research
This term belongs to the dense Latin formulaic vocabulary of early English common law pleading, most commonly encountered in reports from the seventeenth century and earlier. Researchers working with Year Books, early English case reporters (Croke, Raymond), or manuscripts from this period will encounter the phrase embedded in procedural recitations — often without translation or explanation, since readers of those texts were presumed to have Latin fluency.
The primary research trap is treating this as a distinct legal doctrine rather than what it actually is: a pleading or judgment formula. It does not represent an independent cause of action. Its presence in a document signals that costs and charges were at issue in the underlying proceeding, which may help researchers identify the nature of a dispute or the procedural posture of a case.
The phrase also connects to the broader evolution of costs awards in English practice. Before modern costs statutes rationalized the system, the basis for and scope of recoverable costs was contested terrain, and formulaic Latin phrases like this one carried precise procedural weight that later statutory language rendered obsolete. A researcher encountering this phrase in a seventeenth-century report should look to the surrounding procedural context — what writ was being returned, what judgment was being entered — rather than searching for a modern equivalent doctrine.
Because American courts inherited English procedure through reception statutes and common law borrowing, the phrase may surface in early American decisions or pleadings up through the early nineteenth century, particularly in jurisdictions with strong English procedural traditions. By the mid-nineteenth century, code pleading reforms largely eliminated Latin formulaic pleading, and the term effectively disappeared from American practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the only shelf source to include this term, providing a terse but accurate entry: "For (his) costs and charges," supported by citations to T. Raymond 20 and Croke Charles 413. These are authentic seventeenth-century English reporters — Sir Thomas Raymond's reports cover cases from the Restoration era, and Croke's reports cover cases from the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. Burrill's entry does not elaborate on the procedural function of the phrase, its relationship to specific writs or judgment forms, or its jurisdictional footprint. Researchers should not expect more from Burrill here; the entry is characteristic of his handling of formulaic Latin phrases, which he catalogs with citation but without extended commentary.
No other standard historical legal dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus — not Jacob, not Bouvier, not Black's early editions — appear to carry a dedicated entry for this phrase, suggesting it was regarded as sufficiently self-explanatory to practitioners trained in Latin pleading that extended definition was unnecessary.
Jurisdictional Note
This phrase is rooted in English common law pleading practice and has no continuing life in American or modern English procedure. It is relevant almost exclusively to historical legal research involving English courts before the late eighteenth century or early American courts before code pleading reforms.