Definition
In Roman civil law, the actio locati was the action available to a lessor or letter (the locator) against a hirer or lessee (the conductor) for breach of the terms of a hire contract (locatio conductio). Where the party who took possession of a thing — whether goods, property, or services — failed to comply with the agreed terms, the locator could bring this action to recover damages or enforce the obligation.
The action was the mirror counterpart of the actio conducti, which ran in the opposite direction: the conductor's remedy against the locator. Together, the two actions represented the bilateral enforcement mechanism built into Roman hire contracts, reflecting the law's recognition that the locatio conductio created reciprocal obligations on both parties.
Common Confusion
Actio locati is frequently encountered alongside actio conducti and actio ex locato. Actio ex locato is treated in some sources as a synonym for actio locati, referring to the same action described from the locator's perspective. Burrill himself notes "See Actio ex locato" in cross-reference, suggesting the terms were used interchangeably in the secondary literature. Researchers should not treat actio ex locato as a distinct action; the variation is terminological, not substantive. The actio conducti, by contrast, is the distinct and opposite remedy belonging to the conductor (hirer), not the locator.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term anchored entirely in Roman civil law and its reception into European legal systems. Researchers will encounter actio locati primarily in three contexts: (1) treatises on Roman law and civil law foundations, where the locatio conductio contract is analyzed as a foundational category; (2) historical legal dictionaries and glossaries from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, where Latin action names were standard reference vocabulary; and (3) comparative law scholarship tracing the influence of Roman contract categories on civil law jurisdictions.
Researchers working in common law sources will rarely encounter this term in primary materials. Its appearance in English-language legal dictionaries like Burrill reflects the nineteenth-century tradition of cataloguing Roman law vocabulary as background scholarship, not as operative doctrine. Do not expect to find actio locati invoked in American or English case law.
The practical trap in historical sources is the inconsistent use of actio locati versus actio ex locato. Treatises in Latin and those translated from continental European scholarship may use either form without signaling a distinction. Cross-referencing both terms when searching historical indexes and digests is advisable.
The Institutes and Digest citations Burrill provides (Inst. 3.25.pr.; Dig. 19.2) are genuine Roman law sources — Justinian's Institutes and the Digest (also known as the Pandects) — and a researcher tracing the doctrine to its primary sources should consult those titles directly. Heineccius's Elementa Juris Civilis (cited as Heinecc. Elem. Jur. Civ. lib. 3, tit. 25, § 928) is a recognized eighteenth-century institutional treatise on Roman law and is a reliable secondary source for the doctrinal framework.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the only entry in the Law Mind corpus for this term. The definition is concise and accurate: the action belongs to the locator (the one who lets or leases) and lies against the hirer (conductor) for noncompliance with contract terms. Burrill's entry does not elaborate on the range of conduct triggering the action — failure to pay hire, damage to the thing hired, or failure to return it — but the Digest title 19.2 (De locatione et conductione) treats these scenarios in detail.
Historical dictionaries of this period consistently defined actio locati in the same narrow terms without exploring the underlying structure of the locatio conductio or the doctrinal distinctions between the three subcategories of hire (hire of things, hire of services, hire of work). Researchers seeking that deeper analysis should move beyond dictionary entries to institutional treatises on Roman private law.
Jurisdictional Note
Actio locati has no operative role in common law jurisdictions. Its relevance in civil law jurisdictions is historical rather than procedural — modern civil codes in France, Germany, Spain, and Latin America have replaced the Roman actiones with codified contract remedies, though the underlying doctrinal logic of the locatio conductio survives in the structure of lease and hire law across those systems.