Definition
Concursus is a Latin civil-law term with two related but distinct legal meanings, both derived from the image of things "running together."
(1) Concursus creditorum — A conflict or collision among creditors competing for priority against a debtor's estate. In insolvency and similar proceedings, concursus describes the situation in which multiple creditors assert competing liens, privileges, or claims against insufficient assets, requiring a court to adjudicate their relative rights and rankings.
(2) Concursus actionum — A concurrence of actions, meaning the convergence of two or more legal causes of action arising from the same set of facts, such that a plaintiff may have overlapping remedies available simultaneously.
In Louisiana and other jurisdictions with civil-law heritage, concursus has taken on a more specific procedural meaning as a proceeding — analogous to interpleader in common-law systems — by which a party holding funds or property claimed by multiple persons may deposit that property with the court and compel all claimants to litigate their competing rights in a single proceeding.
Common Confusion
Concursus and interpleader are functionally similar but not identical. Both allow a stakeholder to avoid multiple liability by bringing all claimants into one proceeding. The difference lies in origin and procedural detail: interpleader is a common-law equitable remedy codified in federal and state rules, while concursus is the civil-law equivalent, with its own procedural mechanics under codes such as the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure (arts. 4651–4662). Researchers encountering the term in historical civil-law sources or Louisiana materials should not assume that common-law interpleader doctrine maps directly onto concursus.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary trap for researchers is the term's dual meaning. In historical civil-law treatises and the Roman law sources underlying them, concursus most commonly appears in the context of creditor conflict — insolvency, liens, and priority disputes. In modern Louisiana practice, the term has been absorbed into a specific procedural vehicle closer to interpleader. These are not the same thing, and treating them interchangeably will misdirect research.
Researchers working in Louisiana primary sources should look to the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure rather than to common-law interpleader authorities. Federal courts sitting in Louisiana have had occasion to compare the two procedures, and the distinctions matter for questions of federal jurisdiction, the adequacy of state-court proceedings, and the scope of the stakeholder's discharge.
For historical civil-law research, concursus creditorum appears frequently in discussions of bankruptcy, privilege (the civil-law analog to a lien), and hypothec. The term connects the Law Mind corpus to broader bodies of Roman law influence — particularly in Scottish, French, and Louisiana legal systems — and researchers should be alert to the fact that English-language common-law dictionaries treat the term superficially, reflecting its alien status in that tradition.
The concursus actionum usage is less frequently litigated as a standalone doctrine but appears in discussions of election of remedies, cumulation of actions, and the treatment of overlapping causes of action in pleading. Do not conflate it with the creditor-conflict meaning.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the basic framework: concursus carries two meanings — collision/conflict (creditors) and concurrence/meeting (actions) — and all four sources trace the term to the Latin concurrere, to run together. Burrill is the most complete, citing the Institutes directly for the concursus actionum usage and noting its application to insolvency contexts. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence essentially repeat the same two-part definition without elaboration.
What the historical dictionaries miss almost entirely is the procedural development of concursus as a distinct court proceeding in Louisiana law. This omission is significant: by the time the major English-language legal dictionaries were compiled, Louisiana had already developed concursus as a procedural institution in its own right, but that development was not absorbed into the common-law dictionary tradition. Researchers relying solely on these sources will have an adequate view of the civil-law doctrinal background but no visibility into how the term operates as a live procedural mechanism in American litigation today.
Jurisdictional Note
Concursus as a named procedural proceeding is primarily a Louisiana phenomenon, governed by the Louisiana Code of Civil Procedure. In other American jurisdictions, the functional equivalent is interpleader under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 22 or its state analogs. The term may appear in scholarly and historical writing across any jurisdiction influenced by Roman or civil law — Scotland, Quebec, South Africa, the civilian American states — but its procedural significance in live litigation is concentrated in Louisiana.