Definition
A court order reducing a jury's award of damages that the trial judge finds excessive. The plaintiff is typically given a choice: accept the reduced award or submit to a new trial on damages. Remittitur is the primary mechanism by which trial courts check jury verdicts that exceed the bounds of reasonable compensation without disturbing the verdict on liability.
The term carries a second, older meaning: the formal act of sending a record back from a superior court to an inferior court after appellate proceedings. This procedural usage survives in some contexts but is largely absorbed into modern terminology around mandates and remands.
1. Damages reduction. When a jury returns a verdict the trial judge considers grossly excessive, the court may condition denial of the defendant's motion for a new trial on the plaintiff's acceptance of a reduced damages figure. The plaintiff's consent is required; the court cannot simply substitute its own number for the jury's verdict without giving the plaintiff the option to retry.
2. Record remission (historical/procedural). In older practice, remittitur referred to the act of a higher court sending a case back — the record was said to be "remitted" to the lower tribunal. This usage appears prominently in older English and early American authorities and is the primary sense captured in most historical dictionaries.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The reduction by a judge of damages awarded by a jury.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A remission or surrender — remittitur damna being a remission of excess of damages; also a sending back, as when a record is remitted by a superior to an inferior court.
The Wiktionary definition accurately captures the dominant modern legal usage but collapses the two distinct meanings the term has carried historically. Webster's 1913 preserves both senses and reflects the procedural "sending back" usage that dominated earlier practice. Researchers encountering remittitur in nineteenth-century sources should not assume it refers to damages at all — it may describe nothing more than a procedural transfer of a record.
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Common Confusion
REMITTITUR vs. ADDITUR. These are paired but opposite doctrines. Remittitur reduces an excessive jury award; additur increases an inadequate one. Both involve the court conditioning its ruling on a party's consent to an adjusted figure rather than ordering a new trial outright. The critical difference is constitutional: the U.S. Supreme Court held in Dimick v. Schiedt (1935) that additur violates the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial in federal courts, while remittitur does not. Many states reject this asymmetry and permit additur under their own constitutions. The two terms are frequently discussed together and are sometimes mistakenly treated as equivalent in force — they are not, at least in federal practice.
REMITTITUR vs. REMAND. In modern usage, when an appellate court sends a case back to the trial court, the act is called a remand and the accompanying order is the mandate. The older sense of remittitur as a "sending back" overlaps with this concept and can create confusion when reading pre-twentieth-century sources. In current practice, if you encounter remittitur in an appellate procedural context, verify the jurisdiction and era before assuming it refers to damages.
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Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning is the central trap. A researcher working in pre-1900 sources — especially English authorities or early American equity and common law materials — will encounter remittitur primarily as a procedural term describing record transmission, not damages reduction. The damages-reduction sense became dominant in American practice through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as jury trial practice developed and appellate review of verdicts expanded.
The constitutional dimension matters acutely for federal court research. Because the Seventh Amendment constrains how federal courts may interfere with jury findings, remittitur doctrine in federal practice has a distinct constitutional ceiling that state practice may not share. Research that moves between federal and state authorities without flagging this distinction will miss significant divergence in what courts are permitted to do.
The plaintiff's-consent requirement is not always clearly articulated in older sources. Early discussions of remittitur damna may describe the court ordering a reduction without emphasizing that the plaintiff must agree — a reflection of procedural realities that differed from modern practice. Modern doctrine is clear that conditioning a new-trial denial on plaintiff's acceptance of a lower figure is constitutionally permissible precisely because the plaintiff retains a choice; a unilateral judicial reduction without that option raises different concerns.
Researchers working in personal injury, tort, and civil litigation materials should trace how individual jurisdictions have defined "grossly excessive" — the standard for triggering remittitur varies considerably, and historical sources may apply tests that no longer reflect current doctrine.
The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia entry on Damages and Remedies in Tort treats remittitur and additur together, which is the appropriate research context for understanding how courts calibrate jury verdicts at both ends.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary gives the bare Latin gloss ("is sent back, or remitted") and identifies two senses: a sending back of a record and a relinquishment of damages (remittitur damna). The entry is skeletal and cross-references rather than explains, which is typical of Burrill's treatment of procedural Latin terms.
Webster's 1913 is more useful for the researcher: it names both senses, preserves the Latin phrase remittitur damna, and cites Wharton — signaling that the term had an established procedural life in American legal writing by the time of publication. The pairing of both meanings in a general dictionary suggests the record-transmission sense was still sufficiently alive in 1913 to warrant inclusion alongside the damages sense.
Neither source anticipates the constitutional dimension that would come to define modern remittitur doctrine in American courts. The Seventh Amendment analysis, the question of additur's permissibility, and the structured plaintiff-choice mechanism are all post-Burrill developments that historical dictionaries cannot address. Researchers should treat these sources as entry points to older usage, not as reliable guides to current doctrine.
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Jurisdictional Note
Federal courts permit remittitur but not additur under the Seventh Amendment. State courts are not bound by this limitation and many permit both doctrines. The standard for what qualifies as "excessive" and the procedural mechanics of how courts implement remittitur — including how the alternative new-trial option is presented — vary by jurisdiction. Researchers moving between federal and state materials should not assume the doctrines are coextensive.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Damages and Remedies in Tort — Remittitur and Additur (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia)
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