interpleader, n. 1. A suit to determine a right to property held by a usu. disinterested third party (called a stakeholder) who is in doubt about ownership and who therefore deposits the property with the court to permit interested parties to litigate ownership. • Typically, a stakeholder initiates an interpleader both to determine who should […]
Hist. A servant who contracted to work without wages for a fixed period in exchange for some benefit, such as learning a trade or cancellation of a debt or paid passage to another country, and the promise of freedom when the contract period expired. • Indentured servitude could be voluntary or involuntary. A contract usu.
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sist (sist), n. Scots law. 1. Intervention in legal proceedings as an interested third party, e.g., a trustee. 2. An order staying or suspending legal proceedings. — Also termed supersedere. sist, vb. Scots law. 1. To bring into court; to summon. 2. To stay (a judicial proceeding, etc.), esp. by court order.
chattel (chat-[schwa]l). (usu. pl.) Movable or transferable property; personal property; esp., a physical object capable of manual delivery and not the subject matter of real property. “That Money is not to be accounted Goods or Chattels, because it is not of it self valuable ….Chattels are either personal or real. Personal, may be so called
Common-law pleading. A traverse occurring only in the replication whereby the plaintiff is permitted to traverse the whole substance of a plea consisting merely of legal excuse, when the matter does not involve a title or interest in land, authority of law, authority of fact derived from the opposing party, or any matter of record.
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A chemical-patent claim that differentiates the material from prior art in terms of some physical feature, such as melting point or spectrum, rather than its chemical composition. • Fingerprint claims are allowed only when the chemical composition cannot be determined or cannot be distinguished from prior art.
Lloyd’s of London. Insurance. 1. A London insurance mart where individual underwriters gather to quote rates and write insurance on a wide variety of risks. 2. A voluntary association of merchants, shipowners, underwriters, and brokers formed not to write policies but instead to issue a notice of an endeavor to members who may individually underwrite
A lawsuit in which the court authorizes a single person or a small group of people to represent the interests of a larger group; specif., a lawsuit in which the convenience either of the public or of the interested parties requires that the case be settled through litigation by or against only a part of
motion for protective order. A party’s request that the court protect it from potentially abusive action by the other party, usu. relating to discovery, as when one party seeks discovery of the other party’s trade secrets. • A court will sometimes craft a protective order to protect one party’s trade secrets by ordering that any
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Business income calculated in violation of generally accepted accounting principles by including income items and excluding various business expenses. • Many companies use operating earnings to favorably skew their price-earnings (P/E) ratios. Because the rationales for the underlying calculations vary from company to company, and from period to period within a company, operating earnings are
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