Definition
A Latin term used in pleading, meaning "it is to be put" or "it is to be supposed." In common law practice, *putandum* appeared in formal pleading contexts as a phrase of supposition or assumption, introducing a hypothetical premise or a matter to be taken as established for purposes of the pleading. It signals that what follows is to be accepted or treated as given, functioning as a device of legal fiction or assumed fact within the structured formulas of classical pleading.
The term is closely associated with the rigid formalism of common law pleading, where prescribed Latin phrases served structural functions — marking the logical relationship between allegations rather than substantively describing facts.
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Common Confusion
*Putandum* is sometimes loosely grouped with *fictio legis* (legal fiction) because both involve treating something as established that may not be factually proven. The distinction matters: a legal fiction is a substantive doctrine by which courts apply rules to situations technically outside their literal scope; *putandum* is a structural pleading device that signals an assumption within a formal document. The confusion arises most often in secondary literature attempting to translate Latin pleading formulae into modern procedural concepts.
Researchers should also avoid conflating *putandum* with *presumption*. A presumption is a rule of evidence or substantive law; *putandum* is a drafting convention of classical pleading with no direct evidentiary force of its own.
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Why It Matters in Research
*Putandum* is a term almost exclusively encountered in pre-reform common law pleading materials, primarily in English practice before the reforms of the Judicature Acts (1873–1875) and the American Field Code reforms (beginning 1848). Researchers working with early English reports, abridgments, and pleading manuals — particularly those predating the nineteenth century — will encounter it as part of formulaic pleading language that no longer has direct operational equivalents in modern civil procedure.
The principal research trap is treating *putandum* as a substantive legal standard rather than a structural pleading artifact. It does not describe an element of a cause of action; it describes a grammatical and logical function within a plea. Confusion between the structural function of pleading phrases and the substantive law those pleas invoked is a recurring problem when working with early reporters.
Law Mind corpus researchers should also note that *putandum* may appear in proximity to related formulaic phrases — *quod cum*, *ita quod*, *per quod* — each of which serves a distinct logical role in pleading architecture. Conflating these terms produces misreadings of the logical structure of historical pleas. When reading a plea containing *putandum*, the question to ask is: what is being posited as assumed, and does that assumption carry legal weight (as in a legal fiction) or merely narrative weight (as in a matter of inducement)?
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary does not include a standalone entry for *putandum* but addresses the broader pleading context through related entries, including *Quod Cum* — a closely associated pleading formula introduced to explain matters of inducement rather than to allege the gravamen of a claim. Bouvier's treatment of *Quod Cum* is instructive by contrast: it illustrates the distinction between introductory or assumed matter and positive averment. Matter introduced by *quod cum* (or by similarly presumptive Latin phrases like *putandum*) was understood to be explanatory or contextual, not constitutive of the legal claim itself.
The historical dictionaries as a class reflect a limitation here: Latin pleading terms were often treated as self-explanatory within the professional culture of the common law bar, and lexicographers writing for practitioners saw little need to define them at length. This means the researcher must often reconstruct meaning from usage in pleading manuals — Chitty's *Treatise on Pleading*, Stephen's *Principles of Pleading*, or Gould's *Treatise on the Principles of Pleading* — rather than from dictionary authority alone.
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Jurisdictional Note
*Putandum* belongs to the technical vocabulary of English common law pleading and was carried into American practice through early adoption of common law forms. It became obsolete in U.S. jurisdictions as code pleading replaced common law pleading during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it has no recognized place in modern federal or state civil procedure.
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