Definition
A chose transitory is a movable thing — personal property that can be carried or transported from place to place. The term belongs to the older common law classification of property and stands in contrast to a chose local, which is a thing fixed to or connected with a particular location and cannot be moved without losing its essential character. In practical terms, a chose transitory is any tangible movable item: goods, chattels, livestock, or portable instruments. The classification was relevant chiefly to questions of venue and jurisdiction — courts asked whether a dispute concerned a transitory thing (capable of being sued over wherever the parties could be found) or a local thing (requiring litigation in the place where the thing was situated).
Common Confusion
Chose transitory is frequently conflated with chose in action, but the two are distinct categories addressing entirely different legal questions. A chose in action is an intangible right to enforce a claim — a debt, a right to sue — rather than a physical object at all. A chose transitory is a tangible movable thing. The confusion arises because both terms belong to the old French-derived "chose" vocabulary of common law property and appear together in the same historical sources. Separately, chose transitory should not be confused with chose local: the local/transitory distinction turns on mobility, not on tangibility versus intangibility.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter chose transitory almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century sources. The term's primary operational significance in historical law was procedural: it shaped venue rules by distinguishing actions that could be brought wherever the defendant was found (transitory actions, involving transitory things or wrongs) from actions that had to be brought in the place where the subject matter was situated (local actions). A researcher tracing venue doctrine, personal jurisdiction history, or the old local/transitory action distinction will find chose transitory embedded in that framework rather than in substantive property law.
The term has largely disappeared from modern legal usage. Contemporary property law addresses movability through the categories of personal property, chattels, and goods, without resort to the chose transitory label. If you encounter the term in a nineteenth-century pleading, treatise, or digest, it signals a procedural context — likely a venue argument — rather than a dispute about the nature of ownership.
One research trap: do not assume that because chose transitory means "movable thing," it maps cleanly onto modern "personal property." The historical category had jurisdictional implications that modern personal property doctrine does not carry in the same form. Burrill and Black both define the term identically and both cite Cowell and Blount, suggesting the definition had crystallized early and was simply carried forward without development. This means historical sources offer little doctrinal elaboration; the real analytical content lives in the transitory/local action distinction, which must be researched separately.
The encyclopedia connection to premises liability (torts_39) is worth noting: modern slip-and-fall doctrine uses "transitory condition" in a distinct but etymologically related sense — a temporary hazard on a floor or premises. That usage is descriptive rather than taxonomic and does not derive from the chose transitory classification. Researchers working in premises liability should treat the terminological overlap as coincidental.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary and Burrill's Law Dictionary give identical definitions, word for word, both tracing to Cowell's Interpreter and Blount's Law Dictionary — seventeenth-century English lexicographic sources. The uniformity signals that chose transitory was a received definition rather than a contested one; no significant doctrinal disagreement appears in the dictionary tradition. Neither Black nor Burrill elaborates on the procedural implications of the classification, which limits the utility of dictionary sources alone. Researchers seeking the operational significance of the term will need to move to treatises on common law pleading and venue — sources such as Gould on Pleading or Stephen on Pleading — where the local/transitory action distinction is developed at length.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Premises Liability — Slip and Fall (Transitory Conditions), The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia (torts_39). Note: the encyclopedia entry addresses "transitory conditions" in the modern tort sense (temporary hazards on premises), which is a distinct usage from the property classification covered here. The cross-reference is useful for researchers who encounter "transitory" in a tort context and need to confirm they are working in a different doctrinal tradition.