Definition
Latin: "Without this, that." A formal phrase used in old pleading as a term of traverse — that is, a denial of a specific factual allegation made by the opposing party. The pleader would introduce the phrase to signal that the matter following it was being expressly denied. Sine hoc quod is functionally identical to the more commonly encountered phrase absque hoc quod and the Law French equivalent sans ceo que.
Common Confusion
SINE HOC QUOD / ABSQUE HOC QUOD / SANS CEO QUE: These three phrases are interchangeable terms of art from the same procedural tradition. Absque hoc quod is the form most frequently appearing in English legal authorities and is the phrase Black's and Burrill's cross-reference as the primary entry. Sans ceo que is the Law French rendering of the same concept. Researchers encountering any one of these forms in historical pleadings should understand they are looking at the same device. The variation is one of linguistic register — Latin or Law French — not of legal substance.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the historical common law pleading system and will surface in records predating the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century. The Field Code reforms in the United States (beginning 1848) and the English Common Law Procedure Act 1852 abolished the formal system of special pleading under which these traverse formulas operated. After those reforms, the phrase drops out of practical pleading usage almost entirely.
Researchers working in pre-reform case reports, plea rolls, or pleading manuals should understand that sine hoc quod marks the beginning of a formal denial — it is the operative signal to the court and opposing party that what follows is traversed, not admitted. The presence of the phrase is diagnostic: it tells you the document is a plea in traverse (as opposed to a demurrer, a plea in confession and avoidance, or a dilatory plea).
Because absque hoc quod is the dominant form in English-language treatises and digests, historical indexes and search tools are far more likely to index the concept under that phrase. Searching only for sine hoc quod will produce incomplete results. Any corpus search on traverse practice in old pleading should run all three variant phrases.
The phrase will not appear in modern pleading documents. If encountered in a modern context, it is likely either a quotation from or description of historical pleadings, or an archaism in a jurisdiction that preserved older pleading conventions unusually late.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Burrill's are in complete agreement: both define sine hoc quod as a Latin pleading formula meaning "without this, that," and both treat it as a synonym for absque hoc quod, directing the reader to that entry for fuller treatment. Burrill adds the additional cross-reference to the Law French form sans ceo que, which is useful for researchers working with the full range of pre-modern pleading sources, where Law French appears frequently alongside Latin.
Neither dictionary provides substantive discussion of the doctrine of traverse itself under this heading — the entries are essentially cross-references. The historical dictionaries reflect a period in which these forms were already receding; even by the time of the major nineteenth-century legal dictionaries, the elaborate special pleading system that generated these formulas was understood to be obsolete or nearly so.
Researchers seeking fuller doctrinal treatment of the traverse device should consult the classical pleading treatises directly — Chitty on Pleading and Stephen on Pleading being the standard authorities — rather than relying on dictionary entries, which give only the linguistic gloss.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase belongs to the English common law pleading tradition and carries the same meaning in early American practice, which inherited that system wholesale. Jurisdictional variation in the meaning of the phrase itself is not significant; what varies is how long any given jurisdiction retained formal special pleading before adopting code or notice pleading, which affects how late in time these formulas might appear in local records.