Definition
As a legal term of art, "stated" carries two distinct senses depending on context:
1. SETTLED; CLOSED. In accounting and contract law, "stated" means an amount or obligation that has been fixed, agreed upon, and closed between parties. An account stated is one in which the parties have agreed on a definite balance due, ending the open account relationship and creating a new, independent obligation to pay the agreed sum.
2. SCHEDULED; REGULARLY APPOINTED. In procedural and organizational contexts, a "stated" meeting, session, or term is one held at a fixed, pre-appointed time according to an established schedule — as opposed to a special or called meeting convened for a particular purpose.
A third, narrower usage appears in Bouvier: a "stated case" (also called a case stated) refers to a suit or proceeding brought by mutual arrangement of the parties to obtain a court's ruling on a specific legal question in which both have an interest, such as the construction of a will or the resolution of a doubtful point of law agreed upon in advance.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Expressed in a statement; uttered or written. Also, settled or established; recurring at a regular time.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Settled; established; fixed. Recurring at regular times; not occasional.
The ordinary English senses of "stated" — meaning "expressed" or "fixed/regular" — are close but not identical to the legal uses. A lay reader encountering "account stated" might read it as merely "an account that has been described," missing the critical legal consequence: that a stated account is a settled obligation, no longer subject to dispute on its underlying items, and enforceable on its own terms. The procedural sense (stated meeting, stated term) aligns closely with the common meaning of "regular" or "scheduled," but even here the legal effect — notice requirements, quorum rules, validity of actions taken — turns on whether a meeting qualifies as "stated."
Common Confusion
"Account stated" is sometimes confused with a mere account rendered (a billing statement sent by one party without acceptance by the other). An account stated requires mutual agreement, express or implied, on the balance due. A rendered account that is received and not objected to within a reasonable time may ripen into a stated account, but the two are not synonymous at the moment of transmission.
"Stated case" (Bouvier's sense) should not be confused with a "case stated" in the English appellate tradition, though the concepts overlap. In English practice, a case stated was a formal procedural mechanism by which a lower tribunal referred a question of law to a higher court; in American usage, the term is used more loosely for agreed-facts submissions.
Why It Matters in Research
The word "stated" rarely appears as a standalone headword in historical legal sources — it functions primarily as a modifier, and its legal weight depends entirely on the noun it precedes. Researchers must be alert to three distinct doctrinal contexts that generate different bodies of authority:
Account stated: A well-developed common law cause of action with its own pleading rules, statute of limitations triggers (which may differ from the underlying contract), and merger effects. Historical treatises on mercantile accounts (such as Pulling's work cited in Black's) are primary sources; modern research should extend to Restatement (Second) of Contracts principles and state-specific case law on implied acceptance.
Stated meetings: Corporate and organizational law sources govern this usage. Board resolutions, bylaw requirements, and the distinction from special meetings affect the validity of actions taken. Historical charters and early corporate law materials may use "stated" where modern sources say "regular."
Stated case / case stated: This usage is largely historical in American practice but remains significant in English law and in some state administrative procedure contexts. Researchers working with 19th-century equity records or English precedents should recognize it as a procedural device, not a substantive legal concept.
Cross-period research trap: In older American and English sources, "stated" in "stated session" or "stated term" of a court referred to a regularly scheduled sitting of the court — a concept now expressed as a "regular term." Misreading this as a mere descriptive word can cause a researcher to overlook the jurisdictional or procedural significance of whether a court was sitting in its stated versus special term.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (both editions), Burrill's, and the primary sources they cite are in agreement on the core meaning: settled and closed. All three trace the definition through Pulling on Mercantile Accounts and the same reported case (Parke B., Meigs & Welsby, with minor citation variation between editions). The consensus is stable and consistent across these sources.
Bouvier's introduces the "stated case" meaning without overlap with the other dictionaries' "settled/closed" sense — suggesting the editors were capturing a different, procedurally oriented usage common in equity and agreed-submission practice. This divergence is not a contradiction; it reflects the modifier's range.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: none of them address the pleading consequences of an account stated — specifically, that a stated account extinguishes the right to litigate the underlying transactions and substitutes a new, simplified cause of action. This doctrinal point, central to modern litigation strategy, must be supplied from treatises and case law. The dictionary entries are definitional starting points, not complete doctrinal guides.
Jurisdictional Note
The law of account stated varies by state, particularly on the question of how long silence after receipt of a rendered account must continue before implied assent will be found, and which statute of limitations governs a stated account claim versus the underlying contract claim. Some jurisdictions treat the stated account as an independent contract; others treat it as evidentiary. Researchers should not assume uniformity.