RECOVERY

6 definitions found across Law Mind sources

← Dictionary
RECOVERYAuthored
The Law Mind • 1332 words
Definition
Recovery has several distinct meanings in legal usage, and the applicable meaning shifts significantly depending on context. 1. Judgment and relief. The most common modern usage: the amount of money, property, or other relief a court awards to a prevailing party. A plaintiff "recovers" damages when a judgment is entered in their favor. The term encompasses both the act of obtaining judgment and the thing obtained — the recovery is both the winning and the winnings. 2. Common recovery. A historical legal fiction used in English common law to convert an entailed estate (fee tail) into a fee simple, enabling land to pass freely rather than being locked to a line of heirs. The mechanism involved a collusive court proceeding in which a nominal stranger would bring an action for the land, the tenant in tail would suffer judgment, and the result would be treated as extinguishing the entail. Common recovery was abolished in England by the Fines and Recoveries Act of 1833 and never took meaningful root in American law. 3. Restitution or recoupment in specific contexts. In insurance, tax, and restitution law, "recovery" may refer to amounts clawed back, recouped, or reimbursed — distinct from damages in the tort sense. An insurer may have subrogation rights against a tortfeasor to "recover" benefits it paid. The IRS may pursue a "trust fund recovery penalty" against responsible persons who failed to remit withheld employment taxes. 4. Verdict as recovery. In older usage, the term described the verdict itself in a civil action at law — the recorded judgment that a party had established their right. This usage is largely archaic but appears throughout historical pleading treatises and early American case reports. ---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Recovery means a return to a normal state after illness, difficulty, or loss; the action of regaining something lost or taken. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The act of recovering, or regaining; restoration from sickness, famine, etc.; the obtaining of a right to something by a verdict and judgment of court." The gap here is meaningful. In everyday English, recovery is almost always about returning to a prior condition — health, sobriety, finances. In law, recovery frequently refers not to restoration but to acquisition: obtaining something through legal process that may or may not have been "lost" in any intuitive sense. A plaintiff who recovers punitive damages has not returned to a prior state; they have gained something new. The Webster's 1913 definition, notably, straddles both senses and reflects the transition period during which legal and common usage were closer in meaning. ---
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES Common recovery: The historical fee tail workaround. See Historical Dictionary Support below. Judgment recovery: The standard civil litigation outcome — damages, declaratory relief, injunctions, and other court-ordered remedies. Tax recovery: Amounts recaptured by the government or credited back to taxpayers. See Recovery Rebate Credits and Trust Fund Recovery Penalty in the Tax Encyclopedia. Insurance recovery: Amounts obtained by an insurer through subrogation or by an insured under a policy. Restitutionary recovery: Relief measured not by the plaintiff's loss but by the defendant's unjust gain. ---
Why It Matters in Research
The multi-valent nature of this term creates real traps in historical legal research. Pre-twentieth-century American cases often use "recovery" to mean the judgment or verdict itself, not the amount awarded. When a nineteenth-century court says a plaintiff "had his recovery," it means judgment was entered for him — the word functions as a noun describing a legal event, not a dollar figure. Researchers mining early case law for damages principles need to read recovery in context before assuming the modern financial meaning applies. Common recovery is largely irrelevant to American legal research except in the context of colonial-era land records, early state court proceedings involving inherited estates, or comparative law analysis. American states generally addressed fee tail through statutory conversion rather than the common law fiction. If you encounter "common recovery" in a pre-1830 American document, it signals an English-trained lawyer working from common law sources, and the transaction likely involved inherited land. In modern practice contexts — torts, tax, insurance — recovery is a term of art within each field, and cross-domain confusion is easy. A "recovery" in insurance subrogation law operates under different rules and has different strategic implications than a "recovery" in a personal injury action. The Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia entry on premises liability theories of recovery addresses the tort meaning directly, including how theories available to a plaintiff shape what kinds of recovery are possible. The tax-specific uses — recovery rebate credits, trust fund recovery penalty — are technical terms of art that happen to use the word "recovery" for distinct doctrinal reasons. Neither has a meaningful connection to civil damages recovery. Researchers should treat them as independent entries rather than variations on a single concept. ---
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence devote primary attention to the common recovery as a historical mechanism, defining it as "a species of assurance transacted by means of an action at law, formerly much used in England and this country for the purpose of barring estates-tail." They describe the essential fiction: a stranger brings an action, the tenant in tail allows judgment against himself, and the entail is thereby destroyed. Rapalje & Lawrence correctly note that the device was largely supplanted by statute on both sides of the Atlantic by the mid-nineteenth century. For the general meaning, Rapalje & Lawrence treat recovery as encompassing the judgment in a civil action at law — consistent with the historical usage noted above. Their definition is broader than purely financial: recovery includes the establishment of a legal right through verdict, not merely the dollar amount of a damages award. This reflects the common law procedural world in which the form of action defined what recovery was possible, and a "recovery" was first a legal event before it was a sum of money. What historical dictionaries miss: the modern regulatory and administrative uses of recovery — tax clawbacks, insurance restitution, government benefit overpayment recovery — are absent from nineteenth-century sources, as these bodies of law did not exist in their current form. Researchers should not expect Rapalje & Lawrence to illuminate trust fund recovery penalties or recovery rebate credit mechanics. ---
Jurisdictional Note
The doctrinal content of damages recovery varies significantly by jurisdiction, particularly for caps on non-economic damages in tort actions and punitive damages. Fee tail — and thus any relevance of common recovery as a concept — was abolished by statute at varying times across American states, with some states never recognizing fee tail at all. Research into historical land records requires checking the specific state's treatment of entailed estates. ---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Premises Liability — Overview and Theories of Recovery (Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia): Covers the theories under which plaintiffs may obtain tort recovery, including the relevance of entrant status and negligence standards. Recovery Rebate Credits (Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia): Tax-specific recovery concept; distinct from civil damages. Trust Fund Recovery Penalty (Law Mind Tax Encyclopedia): IRS mechanism for recovering unpaid employment taxes from responsible persons; a separate technical usage of the term. ---
Related Terms
Damages — the financial measure of tort and contract recovery Remedy — the broader category of which recovery is one type Restitution — recovery measured by defendant's unjust gain rather than plaintiff's loss Subrogation — the mechanism by which insurers pursue recovery from tortfeasors Fee tail — the estate form that common recovery was designed to circumvent Judgment — the court act that formalizes a recovery Common recovery — the historical fee tail workaround; see Definition above Trust Fund Recovery Penalty — see Tax Encyclopedia Mitigation of damages — the duty to limit the extent of recoverable loss
RECOVERYmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
In its most extensive sense, a recovery is the restoration or vindi- cation of a right existing in a person, by the formal judgment or decree of a competent Qcourt, at his instance and suit, or the obtain- R ing, by such judgment, of some right or property which has been taken or withheld from him. This is also called a "true" re- covery, to distinguish it from a “feigned” or "common" recovery. See COMMON RECOV-
RECOVERYmain
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910
it; and is now uniformly applied where a man brings an action for breach of a contract between him and the defendant; and where the latter can show that some stipulation in the same contract was made by the plaintiff, which he has violated, the defendant may, if he choose, instead of suing in his turn, recoupe his damages arising from the breach committed by the plaintiff, whether they be liquidated or not. Ives v. Van Eppes, 22 Wend. (N. Y.) 156. And see Barber v. Chapin, 28 Vt. 413; Lawton v. Ricketts, 104 Ala. 430, 16 South. 59; Aultman y. Torrey ov Minn. 492, 57 N. W. 211; Dietrich y. Ely, 63 Fed. 413,11 C. GC. A 266; The Wellsville v. Geissie, 3 Ohio St. 341; Nichols v. Dusenbury, 2 N. Y. 286; Myers v. Estell, 47 Miss. 23. In speaking of matters to be shown in defense, the term “recoupment” is‘often used as synonymous with “reduction.” The term is of rench origin, and signifies cutting again, or cutting back, and, as a defense, means the cutting back on the plaintiff's claim by the defendant. Like reduction, it is of necessity limited to the amount of the plaintiff’s claim. It is properly applicable to a case where the same contract imposes mutual duties and obligations on the two parties, and one seeks a remedy for the breach of duty by the second, and the second meets the demand by a claim for the breach of er A the first. Davenport v. Hubbard, 46 Vt. », 14 Am. Rep. 620. “Recoupment’” differs from “set-off” in this respect: that any claim or demand the defendant may have against the plaintiff may be used as a set-off, while it is nut a subject for recoupment unless it grows out of the very same transaction which furnishes the plaintiff's cuuse of action. The term Is, as appears above, synonymous with “reduction ;” but the latter is not a technical term of the law; the word “defalcation,” in one of its meanings, expresses the same idea, and is used interchangeably with recoupment. Ke coupment, as a remedy, corresponds to the reconvention of the civil law. In its most extensive sense, a recovery is the restoration or vindication of a right existing in a person, by the formal judgment or decree of a competent court, at his instance and suit, or the obtaining, by such judgment, of some right or propercy which has been taken or withheld from him This is also called a “true” recovery, to dis- tinguish it from a “feigned” or een recovery. See CoMMON RECOVERY. —Final recovery. The final judgment in an action. Also the final verdict in an action, as oe uence from the judgment entered upon isk v. Gray, 100 Mass. 193; Count Todahes v. Pangborn, 6 Allen (Mass.) 343.
RECOVERYmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883
(1076) of trying such issue. Steph. Pl. (7 edit.) RECOUP. - To keep back or stop 99; 2 Chit. Arch. Pr. (12 edit.) 937.
RECOVERYn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
The act of recovering, regaining, or retaking possession. Restoration from sickness, weakness, faintness, or the like; restoration from a condition of mistortune, of fright, etc. The obtaining in a suit at law of a right to something by a verdict and judgment of court. The getting, or gaining, of something not previously had. [Obs.] "Help be past recovery." Tusser. In rowing, the act of regaining the proper position for making a new stroke. Common recovery (Law), a species of common assurance or mode of conveying lands by matter of record, through the forms of an action at law, formerly in frequent use, but now abolished or obsolete, both in England and America. Burrill. Warren.
recoverynoun
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.
The act or process of regaining or repossession of something lost. | A return to normal health. | A return to former status or position. | The act of regaining the natural position after curtseying. | A return to former status or position. | The act of regaining the position of guard after making an attack, in fencing, sparring, etc. | Renewed growth after a slump. | The recovery of debt. | A verdict giving somebody the right to recover debts or costs. | The extraction of an ore from a mine, or of a metal from an ore | The ability to recover or regain health.

Explore the full Law Mind legal research platform.

SubscribeEncyclopediaSign In
The Law Mind Legal Dictionary. This is a legal research library, not a lawyer.
Dictionary • Encyclopedia • Sign In