Definition
A Latin phrase meaning, literally, "the damages are remitted." Remittitur damna is a formal entry made on the record of a proceeding by which a party — typically the prevailing plaintiff — voluntarily relinquishes a portion of damages awarded by a jury. The procedure arises most commonly when a jury returns a verdict for a sum greater than the amount the plaintiff claimed in the pleadings. Because a judgment cannot properly exceed the demand, the plaintiff must formally remit the excess before judgment can be entered; the remittitur damna is the instrument by which that remission is accomplished. The entry is a unilateral act of record, not an agreement between the parties.
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Common Confusion
REMITTITUR DAMNA vs. REMITTITUR: These terms are related but distinct, and historical sources often use them interchangeably in ways that confuse modern researchers. Remittitur damna is the specific procedural entry by which a plaintiff remits damages exceeding the pleaded claim — a narrow, formal mechanism for correcting an excess verdict. Remittitur in modern usage describes the broader judicial power to reduce an excessive damages award as a condition of denying a new trial, typically presented to the plaintiff as a choice: accept the reduced amount or face retrial on damages. The two share a common function (reducing a jury award) but differ in origin (party-initiated vs. court-initiated), context (clerical excess vs. judicial discretion), and period of dominant use (remittitur damna is largely a historical common-law term; remittitur is the living modern doctrine). Researchers encountering remittitur damna in historical sources should not assume they are reading about the modern conditional-remittitur procedure.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century English or American common law records will encounter remittitur damna in contexts where pleading rules strictly limited recovery to the sum demanded in the declaration. Under the rigid pleading conventions of that era, a plaintiff who declared for one amount and received a larger verdict faced a technical problem: the court could not enter judgment for the excess. The remittitur damna was the procedural solution — a formal notation acknowledging the excess and surrendering it.
Several traps await the historical researcher. First, the Latin phrase is sometimes abbreviated or paraphrased in older records and reports, appearing simply as "remittitur" or "entry of remittitur," which can obscure the specific mechanism at work. Second, because Rapalje & Lawrence's entry conflates the procedure with a voluntary abandonment of damages (not merely correction of an excess), researchers may encounter uses where remittitur damna describes a plaintiff's strategic waiver of rightfully obtained damages — for instance, to defeat a defense objection or to conform a verdict to a theory of recovery. The distinction between corrective remission (excess over claim) and strategic remission (voluntary abandonment) matters when tracing a case's procedural history. Third, the phrase is almost entirely absent from modern American practice; when modern cases or treatises use remittitur, they mean the conditional-new-trial doctrine, not this entry. Treating the terms as equivalent across eras will produce anachronistic readings.
The corpus connection to modern remittitur doctrine (torts_178) is substantive: understanding remittitur damna as the historical root helps researchers trace how the concept of judicial control over excessive damages evolved from a purely party-driven, pleading-mechanical process into an active exercise of judicial discretion.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries present a notably consistent core definition: remittitur damna is an entry on the record remitting damages that exceed the plaintiff's declaration, with all four citing or echoing 2 Tidd's Practice as the primary authority. This uniformity reflects the phrase's status as settled procedural vocabulary by the time these dictionaries were compiled, rather than a contested or evolving concept.
Rapalje & Lawrence add the most substantively, noting that remittitur damna encompasses not only correction of excess-over-declaration situations but also voluntary abandonment of damages a party is "not entitled to, or is willing to abandon." This broader formulation suggests the entry could serve strategic as well as corrective purposes — a nuance absent from the Black's and Burrill entries, which focus exclusively on the excess-verdict scenario. Researchers should treat the Rapalje & Lawrence framing as a more complete account of how the device functioned in practice.
None of the historical dictionaries addresses the procedure's relationship to the emerging modern doctrine of judicial remittitur, which developed later and through different channels. The silence is historically accurate but can mislead researchers who approach the phrase with modern doctrine in mind.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Damages and Remedies in Tort — Remittitur and Additur (The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia, torts_178): Provides the modern doctrinal framework for judicial remittitur and additur, including the constitutional dimensions under the Seventh Amendment. Read alongside this dictionary entry to understand how the historical remittitur damna procedure relates to — and differs from — the modern conditional-remittitur practice.
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