liquidate, vb. 1. To settle (an obligation) by payment or other adjustment; to extinguish (a debt). 2. To ascertain the precise amount of (debt, damages, etc.) by litigation or agreement. 3. To determine the liabilities and distribute the assets of (an entity), esp. in bankruptcy or dissolution. 4. To convert (a nonliquid asset) into cash. […]
Any cost incurred in marketing a product or service, such as advertising, storage, and shipping.
first fruits. 1. Hist. One year’s profits from the land of a tenant in capite, payable to the Crown after the tenant’s death. — Also termed primer seisin. 2. Hist. Eccles. law. The first year’s whole profits of a clergyman’s benefice, paid by the incumbent to the Pope, or (after the break with Rome) to
embezzlement, n. The fraudulent taking of personal property with which one has been entrusted, esp. as a fiduciary. • The criminal intent for embezzlement — unlike larceny and false pretenses — arises after taking possession (not before or during the taking). — Also termed defalcation; peculation. See LARCENY; FALSE PRETENSES. [Cases: Embezzlement 1. C.J.S. Embezzlement
state of nature. The lack of a politically organized society. • The term is a fictional construct for the period in human history predating any type of political society. “[W]e may make use of the contrast, familiar to the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between the civil state and the state of nature.
statutory period. 1. A time limit specified in a statute; esp., the period prescribed in the relevant statute of limitations. • This period includes, in addition to a fixed number of years, whatever time local law allows because of infancy, insanity, coverture, and other like circumstances. 2. Patents. The time available to a patent applicant
escheat (es-cheet), n. 1. Hist. The reversion of land ownership back to the lord when the immediate tenant dies without heirs. See WRIT OF ESCHEAT. 2. Reversion of property (esp. real property) to the state upon the death of an owner who has neither a will nor any legal heirs. [Cases: Escheat 1–8. C.J.S. Escheat
Socage in which the services were both certain and honorable. • By the statute 12 Car. 2, ch. 24 (1660), all the tenures by knight-service were, with minor exceptions, converted into free socage. — Also termed free and common socage; liberum socagium.
solicitor. 1. A person who seeks business or contributions from others; an advertiser or promoter. 2. A person who conducts matters on another’s behalf; an agent or representative. 3. The chief law officer of a governmental body or a municipality. [Cases: Municipal Corporations 169. C.J.S. Municipal Corporations § 371.] 4. In the United Kingdom, a
motion for relief from the judgment. A party’s request that the court correct a clerical mistake in the judgment — that is, a mistake that results in the judgment’s incorrectly reflecting the court’s intentions — or relieve the party from the judgment because of such matters as (1) inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect, (2) newly
motion for relief from the judgment Read More »