BARRATOR - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

BARRATORAuthored

The Law Mind • 898 words

Definition

A barrator is a person who habitually stirs up quarrels, litigation, or discord — either by inciting lawsuits between others, engaging in groundless legal proceedings, or otherwise promoting contention as a course of conduct. The term is the agent noun for the offense of barratry.

Because barratry itself encompasses several distinct wrongs (chronic vexatious litigation, bribery of public offices, and maritime fraud), the term barrator is used most precisely in the criminal-law context to mean a common barrator: one who makes a practice of exciting suits and quarrels, as distinguished from a person who commits a single such act. The "common" qualifier carries real weight — isolated misconduct was not enough; the charge required a pattern.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): One who vexes others with frequent and groundless lawsuits; a pettifogger. Also used for one who buys or sells political or ecclesiastical offices, or a ship's master who commits maritime fraud.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "One guilty of barratry."

Webster's offers nothing beyond a circular reference to barratry, and Wiktionary captures the full range of meanings reasonably well. The gap worth noting for legal researchers is this: in ordinary usage the word has nearly vanished from living English, but in historical legal sources it carries precise technical force — particularly the requirement of habitual or repeated conduct. A single act of stirring up litigation did not make one a barrator in the criminal law sense.

Common Confusion

Barrator is sometimes loosely used in historical sources as a synonym for any vexatious litigant, pettifogger, or maintenance-monger. These are related but distinct roles. A maintainer finances or assists another's suit without lawful interest. A champerty involves a share of the proceeds as consideration. A barrator is the instigator — the one who stirs up the dispute in the first place, often without direct financial stake in the outcome. Conflating these terms in historical research will distort what the source is actually alleging.

Why It Matters in Research

The term barrator appears almost exclusively in historical sources. It is functionally obsolete in modern American and English criminal law, where the conduct it described has been largely absorbed into statutes on vexatious litigation, abuse of process, and professional conduct rules governing attorneys. Researchers encountering the term in corpus materials should treat it as a signal that the surrounding text is either pre-twentieth century or deliberately archaic in register.

Two research traps:

First, the "common" qualifier. Historical indictments and treatises consistently require the defendant be charged as a common barrator. Sources that omit this qualifier — or that describe a single incident — may be using the word loosely, which affects how reliably you can map the source to the formal offense.

Second, maritime displacement. In modern usage, barratry has migrated almost entirely into admiralty and maritime law, where it refers to fraudulent or criminal acts by a ship's master or crew against the owner. When nineteenth- and twentieth-century legal sources use the word barratry without context, they often mean the maritime sense. Barrator, by contrast, almost always retains its criminal-law, litigation-stirring meaning in historical texts — but confirm the context before assuming.

The term also appears in ecclesiastical and political contexts (buying or selling offices), which maps onto the distinct offense of simony in church law. Researchers working in English legal history or canon law sources should be alert to which sense is operative.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionaries are sparse and largely circular on this entry. Black's (both editions) simply define barrator as one guilty of the crime of barratry, deferring all substance to that parent entry. Burrill redirects entirely to "Barretor," an alternate spelling, without independent content.

Bouvier is the most useful of the four, and even there the substance is brief: a barrator is one who commits barratry, defined as "the offence of frequently exciting and stirring up quarrels and suits, either at law or otherwise," with the requirement that an indictment charge the offender as a common barrator. Bouvier's citation to Blackstone (4 Bl. Com. 134) and Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 368) places the offense firmly in the English common law tradition, where it was a misdemeanor at common law long before American codification.

What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: they do not distinguish the litigation-stirring sense from the maritime and simony senses, leaving it to context to resolve. They also do not flag the practical near-disappearance of criminal prosecution for barratry in the American courts, which was underway even by the mid-nineteenth century.

Jurisdictional Note

A handful of American states retained criminal barratry statutes into the twentieth century, but prosecutions were rare and many statutes have since been repealed or fallen into disuse. California notably retained and used its barratry statute against certain solicitation conduct by attorneys. Researchers should verify whether any given jurisdiction had an operative statute at the relevant time rather than assuming common-law barratry was actionable everywhere in the United States.

BARRATORmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

crime of barratry.

BARRATORmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

One who commits bar- ratry. BARRATRY (Fr. barat, baraterie, rob- bery, deceit, fraud). Sometimes written Barretry. Bla. Com. In Criminal Law. The offence of fre- quently exciting and stirring up quarrels and suits, either at law or otherwise. 4 Bla. Com. 134; Co. Litt. 368; 8 W. 36 b. An indictment for this offence must charge the offender with being a common barrator; 1 Sid. 282; Train & H. Prec. 55; and the proof must show at least three in- stances of offending: 15 Mass. 227; 1 Cush. 2.8:1 Bail. 379; 52 Pa. 243; 55 Cal. 126; 51 Barb. 580. An attorney is not liable to indictment for maintaining another in a groundless action: 1 Bail. 379. See 2 Bish. Cr. Law § 63; 2 id. §§ 57-61; 9 Cow. 587; 15 Mass. 229; 11 Pick. 482; 18 id. 362; 1 Bail. 379; 2 Saund. 308 and note. The purchase of a single claim, with the intention of suing upon it, does not amount to barratry; to constitute the offence there must be a practice of fomenting suits; Chase's Bla. Com. 905, n. 7; 51 Barb. 580. In Maritime Law and Insurance. An unlawful or fraudulent act, or very gross and culpable negligence, of the master or mariners of a vessel in violation of their duty as such, and directly prejudicial to the owner, and without his consent; Roccus, h. t.; Abbott, Ship. 167, n.; Pars. Mar. L. 239 et seq.; 2 Stra. 581; 2 Ld. Raym. 849;7 Term 505; 2 Caines 67, 222; 1 Johns. 229; 13 id. 451; 2 Binn. 274; 8 Cra. 139; 9 Allen 217; 5 Day 1; 8 Wheat. 163; 4 Dall. 294; 2 M. & S. 172; 5 B. & Ald. 597; 1 Campb. 434; 2 Cush: 511; 8 Pet. 230. It is said that the term implies an intentional injury; it does not embrace cases of negligence; 4 Daly 1. A part owner of a ship who is its master may be guilty of barratry towards his co-owners; 82 Me. 363; 62 Hun 4. It extends, in addition to grosser cases of bar- ratry, to the following:-sailing out of a port without paying port dues, whereby the cargo is forfeited; 6 Term 379; disre- garding an embargo; 1 Term 127; or a blockade; 6 Taunt. 375; and when a master was directed to make purchases, and went into an enemy's settlement to trade (though it could be done there to better advantage), whereby the ship was seized, it was held barratry; L. R. 1 Q. B. 162; even though he thought thereby to benefit the owner. When a master is entitled to use his discre- tion, his conduct will not constitute bar- ratry, unless he goes against his better judg- ment: 1 Stark. 240. See L. R. 8 C. P. 476. The grossest barratries, as piratically or feloniously seizing or running away with the vessel or cargo, or voluntarily deliver- ing the vessel into the hands of pirates, or mutiny, are capital offences by the laws of the United States; Act of Congress, April 30, 1790, 1; Story's Laws U. S. 84. Barra- try is one of the risks usually insured against in marine insurance; 8 Kent, Lacy's ed. 305, n. 50. See INSURABLE INTEREST.

BARRATORcrossref

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

See Barretor.

BARRATORn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

One guilty of barratry.

barratornoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

One who is guilty of barratry, vexing others with frequent and often groundless lawsuits; a brangler and pettifogger. | One who abuses their office by dealing fraudulently. | One who buys or sells political or ecclesiastic offices. | One who abuses their office by dealing fraudulently. | A judge who accepts bribes. | One who abuses their office by dealing fraudulently. | A ship's master who commits gross fraud or barratry. | A quarrelsome person, one who fights, a bully.

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