Definition
"Bution" does not appear as a recognized legal term in English or American law. The source material attributed to this entry is drawn from a Rapalje & Lawrence entry on AVERAGE — specifically, a passage discussing petty average charges such as towage and beaconage owed by cargo owners or consignees to a shipmaster. The text was apparently misattributed or mis-indexed under "Bution."
No independent legal meaning for "bution" has been identified in English common law, American statutory law, civil law traditions, or standard legal lexicography. The term does not appear in Black's Law Dictionary, Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Burrill's Law Dictionary, or other authoritative historical or modern sources.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encountering "bution" in a historical legal index, catalog, or database should treat it as a probable indexing artifact, OCR error, or transcription corruption rather than a genuine legal term. The Rapalje & Lawrence passage associated with this entry belongs properly under AVERAGE, and specifically under the subcategory of PETTY AVERAGE or GENERAL AVERAGE. Researchers working in admiralty law, maritime shipping history, or cargo liability should redirect their search accordingly.
OCR-generated errors are a documented hazard in digitized legal dictionaries from the nineteenth century. Terms appearing at the top or bottom of a column break, or adjacent to damaged print, are particularly susceptible to false indexing. "Bution" may represent a fragment of a longer word — possibly "contribution," a term of genuine legal significance in the law of general average, or "distribution," relevant to cargo and freight allocation — corrupted in transcription or scan.
If you are tracing this term from a primary source document (a bill of lading, shipping contract, or admiralty pleading), the surrounding context will be decisive. The substantive law most likely underlying any such usage is the law of average contributions in maritime commerce.
Historical Dictionary Support
The sole source entry available — Rapalje & Lawrence — does not define "bution" as a term of art. The passage provided discusses average in its maritime sense: petty charges such as towage and beaconage that owners or consignees of shipped goods are obligated to reimburse to the master or shipowner, typically stipulated in the bill of lading. Rapalje & Lawrence cite Smith's Mercantile Law (p. 319) and Molloy (p. 270), where average or petty average is described as "a small recompence or gratuity for the master's care over the ladi[ng]" — the passage cutting off mid-sentence, consistent with a transcription or OCR break.
No historical legal dictionary surveyed treats "bution" as a standalone term. The entry as presented reflects source material that has been misassigned or corrupted in the indexing process.