CONCLUDE

7 definitions found across Law Mind sources

CONCLUDEAuthored
The Law Mind • 952 words
Definition
To conclude, in legal usage, carries two primary and distinct meanings: 1. To finish or bring to a final determination. A proceeding, pleading, argument, or agreement is concluded when it is brought to its legal end — when no further action remains open or is required. A jury concludes its deliberations; parties conclude a treaty or contract; a court concludes a hearing. 2. To estop, bar, or bind. To conclude a party is to shut that party off from asserting a contrary position — to hold them to what they have already done, said, or admitted. A party concluded by a record, return, or prior act cannot plead or claim anything inconsistent with it. In this sense, conclude is nearly synonymous with estop. The second meaning is the distinctively legal one and the more technically significant of the two.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To end or come to an end; to bring to a close; to reach a decision or judgment; to make or effect (as in concluding an agreement). Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To reach as the end of reasoning; to infer from premises; to close an argument by inferring. Also, archaic senses: to shut up or enclose; to include or comprehend. The common language captures the "finish" and "decide" senses well enough, but it misses the estoppel sense entirely. When a historical legal source says a party is "concluded," the meaning is not merely that deliberation has ended — it is that the party is legally barred from contradicting a position. A researcher reading "the sheriff is concluded by his return" should not interpret this as the sheriff finishing something; it means the sheriff is bound and cannot contradict what his own return states.
Common Confusion
Conclude (to estop) vs. conclude (to finish): These two legal senses look identical on the page and share the same word, but the legal consequences are entirely different. Context is the guide: when applied to a party, a return, a record, or a pleading, conclude almost always carries the estoppel meaning. When applied to a proceeding, hearing, argument, or negotiation, it carries the finishing meaning. Misreading an estoppel sense as merely a procedural close can cause a researcher to miss the substantive legal effect — that a party has lost the right to assert a claim or defense.
Why It Matters in Research
The estoppel sense of conclude is pervasive in early common law materials and largely disappeared from modern usage, replaced by estop and its variants. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century case law, pleading records, or English equity materials will encounter conclude used in the estoppel sense far more often than modern instincts prepare them for. The phrase "concluded by the record" or "concluded by his own act" is a term of art signaling that a formal estoppel has attached — not a casual observation that something has ended. The finishing sense, by contrast, carries forward with full force and presents little interpretive difficulty. It is active in treaty law ("the parties concluded an agreement"), in procedural contexts ("the court concluded the hearing"), and in contract formation analysis. In the Law Mind corpus, conclude in older materials should trigger a flag: is this the estoppel sense or the finishing sense? The surrounding grammatical structure usually resolves the question — the estoppel sense is almost always passive and applied to a person or instrument ("he is concluded," "the party is concluded"), while the finishing sense is active and applied to a proceeding or document. Researchers using this term as a search key should also be aware that concluded and concluding appear in different doctrinal neighborhoods. Concluded agreement language appears in contract formation disputes (whether a binding agreement was reached). Concluded party language appears in estoppel, res judicata, and pleading practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are consistent and mutually reinforcing on the estoppel sense. Burrill is the most complete: he gives the Latin root (concludere — to shut together), quotes Littleton and Coke, and explains the metaphor clearly — to conclude a party is to shut that party up, to bar them from opening a contrary claim. The example of the sheriff concluded by his own return is Burrill's, and it is an instructive one: the legal act of making a return binds the sheriff to its truth; he cannot later deny it. Rapalje & Lawrence confirm the bar/estop equation and cite Coke on Littleton for the same proposition. Black's (both editions) offers the most compressed version — "to finish; determine; to estop; to prevent" — without unpacking the estoppel content, which makes it less useful to a researcher unfamiliar with the term. Anderson's entry provided here does not address conclude directly but illustrates the neighboring conceptual territory of concealment, suggesting the entry may have been misfiled or truncated in the source. None of the historical dictionaries adequately flag the risk of confusing the two senses, nor do they address the term's application in statute construction contexts, which Rapalje & Lawrence gesture at with the citation to 2 Mass. 470 but do not develop.
Jurisdictional Note
The estoppel sense of conclude was common to English common law courts and carried into American jurisdictions through early reception of common law doctrine. It appears more frequently in Eastern seaboard state courts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, consistent with stronger common law influence. Civil law jurisdictions did not use the term in this technical sense.
Related Terms
Estoppel | Concluded by Record | Bar | Bind | Preclusion | Res Judicata | Concluded Agreement | Pleading | Return (Sheriff's) | Judgment | Finality
CONCLUDEmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
To finish; determine; to ing a fine of lands, the concord was an agree- estop; to prevent.
CONCLUDEmain
Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888
-To bar or estop (q. v.) Co. Litt. 37 a, 170 a. CONCLUDE, (in a statute). 2 Mass. 470. CONCLUDED, (agreement must be, to become a contract). 3 Wheel. Am. C. L. 340.
CONCLUDEmain
Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890
Leaving a place, requesting that false information of the person's movements be given, is concealment.1 4. To contrive to prevent the discovery or disclosure of a fact. When the operation of a statute of limitations is to be suspended if the debtor "conceals the cause of action," there must be an arrangement or contrivance of an affirmative character to prevent subsequent discovery.2 To "conceal the death of a bastard child" is a misdemeanor. The time was when the mother had to prove, by at least one witness, that the infant was dead-born; if she could not she was presumed to be guilty of murder. See AIDER AND ABETTER. The fact that the owner of stolen goods does not know of the theft does not amount to a "concealment of the larceny" on the part of the thief, within a provision that where a thief conceals his crime the period of concealment is not to be included within the period of limitation.4 5. To neglect or forbear to disclose information; to withhold intelligence of a fact which in good faith ought to be communicated.5 In insurance law, concealment is the intentional withholding of any fact material to the risk, which the assured, in honesty and good faith, ought to communicate to the underwriter. That is a "material fact" the knowledge or ignorance of which naturally influences the judgment of the underwriter in making the contract, or in estimating the degree and character of the risk, or in fixing the rate of the premium. See further REPRESENTATION, 1 (2). "Fraudulent concealment" is the suppression of something which a party is bound to disclose. The intention to deceive must clearly appear. The test is, whether one party knowingly suffered the other to deal under a delusion. "Undue concealment," which amounts to fraud in the sense of a court of equity, and for which it will grant relief, is the non-disclosure of those facts and circumstances which one party is under some legal or equitable obligation to communicate to the other, and which the latter has a right not merely in foro conscientiæ, but juris et de jure, to know. Deliberate concealment is equivalent to deliberate falsehood.8 In making a contract, each party is bound to communicate his knowledge of the material facts, provided he knows that the other party is ignorant of them, and they are not open and naked, or equally within the reach of the party's observation, and that 1 North v. McDonald, 1 Biss. 59 (1854). * Boyd v. Boyd, 27 Ind. 429 (1867). $4 Bl. Com. 198, 358. Free v. State, 13 Ind. 324 (1859). • See Gerry v. Dunham, 57 Me. 339 (1869). • Magee v. Manhattan Life Ins. Co., 92 U. S. 98 (1875), Swayne, J.; Bartholmew v. Warner, 32 Conn. 103 (1864). 1 Story, Eq. § 207; Paul v. Hadley, 23 Barb. 524 (1857). • Crosby v. Buchanan, 23 Wall. 454 (1874). there is an obligation to communicate truly and fairly, by confidence reposed, or otherwise. See FRAUD. Aliud est celare, aliud tacere. It is one thing to conceal, another to be silent. Silence is not concealment - where matters are equally open for the exercise of judgment. See СлVEAT, Emptor; SILENCE. 1. To close, end, terminate; to finish, complete. Conclusion. (1) An ending or closing, as of an instrument or a pleading. See DECLARATION, 23 INDICTMENT; PLEA, 2. (2) The last argument to a court, or the last address to a jury. See BURDEN, Of proof. (3) An inference or deduction: as, a con. clusion of fact, or of law. See PRESUMPTION. 2. To put an end to, close up; to be final; to estop, bar, preclude.6 14 Kent, 482, note (a). 2 Hooper v. Robinson, 98 U. S. 536, 538 (1878), Swayne, J.; Robbins v. Firemen's Fund Ins. Co., 16 Blatch. 127 (1879). 3 Cummerford v. Thompson, 2 Flip. 614 (1880). 4 Centre Turnpike Co. v. Smith, 12 Vt. 216 (1840). 5 L. claudere, to shut up, close. See Hilliard v. Beattie, 58 N. H. 112 (1877).
CONCLUDEv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To shut up; to inclose. [Obs.] The very person of Christ [was] concluded within the grave. Hooker. To include; to comprehend; to shut up together; to embrace. [Obs.] For God hath concluded all in unbelief. Rom. xi. 32. The Scripture hath concluded all under sin. Gal. iii. 22. To reach as an end of reasoning; to infer, as from premises; to close, as an argument, by inferring; -- sometimes followed by a dependent clause. No man can conclude God's love or hatred to any person by anything that befalls him. Tillotson. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith. Rom. iii. 28. To make a final determination or judgment concerning; to judge; to decide. But no frail man, however great or high, Can be concluded blest before he die. Addison. Is it concluded he shall be protector Shak. To bring to an end; to close; to finish. I will conclude this part with the speech of a counselor of state. Bacon. To bring about as a result; to effect; to make; as, to conclude a bargain. "If we conclude a peace." Shak. To shut off; to restrain; to limit; to estop; to bar; -- generally in the passive; as, the defendant is concluded by his own plea; a judgment concludes the introduction of further evidence argument. If therefore they will appeal to revelation for their creation they must be concluded by it. Sir M. Hale.
CONCLUDEv.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
To come to a termination; to make an end; to close; to end; to terminate. A train of lies, That, made in lust, conclude in perjuries. Dryden. And, to conclude, The victory fell on us. Shak. To form a final judgment; to reach a decision. Can we conclude upon Luther's instability Bp. Atterbury. Conclude and be agreed. Shak.
concludeverb
Wiktionary (English) • 2026
Wiktionary contributorsCC 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.
To end; to come to an end. | To bring to an end; to close; to finish. | To bring about as a result; to effect; to make. | To come to a conclusion, to a final decision. | To make a final determination or judgment concerning; to judge; to decide. | To shut off; to restrain; to limit; to estop; to bar. | To shut up; to enclose. | To include; to comprehend; to shut up together; to embrace; to confine. | to deduce, to infer (develop a causal relation)

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