Definition
A procedural term from nineteenth-century English equity and common law practice referring to a claim that fell outside the categories enumerated in the court's standing orders — specifically the English court orders of April 22, 1850 — and therefore could not be filed or prosecuted as of right. A party wishing to pursue a special claim was required to obtain the express leave of the court before proceeding. The term is essentially obsolete in modern practice and has no direct functional equivalent in contemporary American or English civil procedure.
Common Confusion
"Special claim" should not be confused with specialized or particular types of tort or contract claims that happen to be unusual or fact-specific. In modern usage, lawyers and researchers sometimes apply the phrase loosely to mean any distinctive or non-routine legal claim. The historical legal meaning is narrower and procedural: it describes a claim's status relative to an enumerated list of permitted claim types, not the substantive nature of the claim itself.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter this term almost exclusively in English legal materials from the mid-to-late nineteenth century — parliamentary records, treatise discussions of Chancery and common law court procedure, and case reports arising under the 1850 orders. The term has essentially no footprint in American law, which did not adopt the same system of enumerated claim orders.
The key research trap is anachronism. A nineteenth-century English text stating that a party "brought a special claim" is not describing a distinctive or unusual cause of action in the substantive sense. It is describing a procedural posture: the claim required judicial permission to proceed because it did not appear on an approved list. Reading the phrase through a modern lens will systematically mislead.
When tracing disputes from this era, check whether the court granted leave before the merits were reached. If leave was denied, the case may have ended on procedural grounds that look — to the modern eye — like a merits dismissal. The 1850 orders themselves are the controlling reference point; any claim analyzed under those orders that the court classified as falling outside their enumerated categories would be designated a special claim.
Because this term governed procedure rather than substantive rights, it is unlikely to appear in doctrinal discussions of particular causes of action. It surfaces instead in procedural treatises, court rules commentary, and records of interlocutory applications. Researchers working with English Victorian-era court records or chancery practice materials should flag its appearance as a signal to investigate the procedural history of the case before drawing conclusions about the underlying legal theory.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje and Lawrence provide the only substantive entry in the Law Mind corpus: "In English law, a claim not enumerated in the orders of 22d April, 1850, which required the leave of the Court of [Chancery] [to proceed]." The entry is brief, as befits a procedural term of art whose content was entirely defined by external court orders rather than by common law doctrine. The dictionary does not elaborate on what categories of claims were enumerated in the 1850 orders or on what grounds leave would typically be granted or denied.
No American legal dictionary in the standard corpus assigns substantive content to this phrase. Its absence from American sources confirms what the Rapalje and Lawrence entry implies: this was a term of English procedural mechanics that did not migrate into American court practice, which organized jurisdiction and claim types through different structural means.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is strictly English in origin and application. American courts did not operate under the April 1850 orders or any analogous enumerated-claim system that generated a comparable procedural category. Researchers working in American historical sources will not encounter the term in its technical sense.