Definition
Latin phrase meaning "for goods taken away" or "for taking away goods." De bonis asportatis identifies the specific form of trespass action brought to recover damages for the unlawful taking of personal property. The full phrase most commonly appears as trespass de bonis asportatis — the common law writ and action directed at a defendant who wrongfully seized or carried off another's chattels.
The phrase operates as a descriptor, not a standalone cause of action. It distinguishes trespass to personal property (specifically involving removal) from other trespass forms, particularly trespass vi et armis (trespass by force) and trespass quare clausum fregit (trespass to land).
Common Confusion
De bonis asportatis is sometimes loosely treated as synonymous with trespass to chattels or conversion. The distinctions matter for historical research. Trespass de bonis asportatis addressed the unlawful taking or carrying away of goods — the asportation (removal) was the gravamen of the action. Conversion developed as a separate action (trover) for cases where goods were not necessarily taken by direct force but were wrongfully appropriated or withheld. Trespass to chattels in modern usage covers interference with possession short of conversion. In older sources, these lines were procedural as much as substantive, and researchers will find courts treating the overlap differently depending on era and jurisdiction.
Why It Matters in Research
This phrase is a navigational marker in historical common law pleading. Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century case reports, writs, or pleading treatises will encounter it frequently in the caption or body of trespass actions involving stolen or seized personal property. It signals the procedural form chosen by the plaintiff and carries implications for what elements were required, what defenses applied, and what damages were available.
The practical significance largely collapsed with the abolition of the forms of action in most common law jurisdictions during the nineteenth century. Following code pleading reforms — the Field Code in New York (1848) and analogous reforms elsewhere — plaintiffs were no longer required to plead in the technical language of the old writs. Modern complaints alleging wrongful taking of personal property are typically framed as conversion or trespass to chattels without invoking the Latin form. Researchers should therefore expect de bonis asportatis to appear almost exclusively in pre-reform materials and in treatises discussing the history of pleading.
A trap in historical sources: the phrase sometimes appears abbreviated or split across variant spellings. Asportatis is occasionally rendered asportavit in action-specific contexts (meaning "he carried away"), and researchers searching digitized historical records should run both forms. The phrase also appears in criminal contexts — indictments for larceny or theft sometimes incorporated asportavit language to allege the carrying-away element — which is a distinct usage from the civil trespass action.
For corpus researchers, the presence of this phrase in a document is a strong signal that the source predates code pleading reforms in that jurisdiction, or that the author is writing in a treatise or historical mode. It is a useful chronological anchor.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill's Law Dictionary are in complete agreement, tracking the same definition word for word and citing the same authority — Tidd's Practice — with Burrill adding a cross-reference to Browne on Actions. The consistency across dictionaries reflects that this was a settled term of art with no contested meaning: it named a recognized common law action form, not a concept subject to doctrinal dispute.
What the historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural context in any depth. They identify the phrase and its translation but leave unstated the elements of the action it named, the relationship to other trespass forms, or the trajectory of the action following pleading reform. Researchers relying solely on these definitions will get an accurate translation but an incomplete picture of how the term functioned in litigation.
Tidd's Practice, cited by all three sources, was a standard English pleading treatise of the early nineteenth century and is the authoritative period reference for the procedural mechanics underlying this action.
Jurisdictional Note
The action of trespass de bonis asportatis was a feature of common law procedure across English-derived jurisdictions. Its disappearance as a pleaded form tracks the adoption of code pleading and later notice pleading reforms, which varied in timing by jurisdiction — generally mid-to-late nineteenth century in American states, with English reforms arriving via the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875.