Definition
A delivery bond is a surety instrument by which a party whose goods have been seized—typically under revenue laws, customs enforcement, or legal process—obtains the return of those goods by providing security guaranteeing that the property will be made available for judgment or forfeiture if so required. The obligor effectively substitutes a bond for the physical retention of the goods, allowing use or possession of the property pending resolution of the underlying proceeding.
In practice, the bond functions as a conditional release: the seized goods are returned to the owner or claimant, but the surety stands liable for their value should the owner fail to produce them when legally required. The bond's condition is typically phrased as an obligation to restore the property or satisfy any judgment rendered against it.
Common Confusion
DELIVERY BOND vs. FORTHCOMING BOND vs. CLAIM PROPERTY BOND: These three instruments are closely related and are sometimes used interchangeably in older sources, but they carry distinct procedural contexts. A forthcoming bond is given to ensure that seized property will be produced at a specified time and place—usually a sale or hearing. A claim property bond (also called a replevin bond or claimant's bond) is specifically associated with a claimant asserting ownership of seized goods and seeking their return pending litigation. A delivery bond is the broader category: it secures the return or production of goods already taken under process, without necessarily asserting an ownership claim. Researchers encountering any of these terms in historical sources should check the procedural posture of the underlying proceeding before treating them as synonyms.
Why It Matters in Research
The delivery bond is a narrow, procedurally specific instrument that appears most prominently in pre-twentieth-century case law and in Louisiana practice. Researchers should be alert to several navigational points:
First, the term is geographically concentrated. Black's Law Dictionary expressly notes Louisiana as the jurisdiction of primary use. This reflects Louisiana's civil law heritage, in which the instrument's function maps onto continental saisie and related attachment procedures more naturally than in common law states. Researchers applying the term to common law jurisdictions should look instead for forthcoming bond or replevin bond as functional equivalents.
Second, the historical corpus will reflect revenue law and customs seizure contexts. The federal customs and revenue enforcement apparatus of the nineteenth century generated a substantial body of bond practice, and delivery bonds appear in that literature in connection with goods seized for tariff violations or smuggling. Researchers working in that period should cross-reference treasury regulations and customs court practice.
Third, the term has effectively dropped out of modern legal usage in most jurisdictions. Contemporary practice subsumes the delivery bond's function under replevin bonds, supersedeas bonds, or release-of-lien bonds depending on the context. Encountering the term in a modern document—particularly outside Louisiana—warrants scrutiny of whether the drafter is using historical terminology or a jurisdiction-specific form.
Fourth, the bond's condition language is essential to its legal effect. Historical sources vary in how they describe what triggers the surety's liability: some formulations require production of the goods themselves, others permit satisfaction of an equivalent judgment in value. This distinction matters when the goods are consumed, transferred, or destroyed before judgment.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides the authoritative working definition: a bond given upon seizure of goods under revenue laws, conditioned on their restoration to the seizing authority if judgment goes against the claimant, with Louisiana identified as the primary jurisdiction.
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, in the relevant edition consulted, does not supply a substantive definition but cross-references FORTHCOMING BOND and CLAIM PROPERTY BOND—a useful signal that Bouvier treated these instruments as members of a family requiring differentiated analysis rather than a single unified concept. This cross-reference structure itself is instructive: it tells the researcher that nineteenth-century practice recognized meaningful distinctions among these bond forms and that the terms were not freely interchangeable even then.
Neither source addresses the bond's modern status or its displacement by other suretyship instruments, which reflects the broader limitation of classical legal dictionaries: they capture practice at a moment in time without tracking subsequent obsolescence.
Jurisdictional Note
Louisiana remains the jurisdiction most associated with delivery bond practice, and researchers should apply the term most confidently in that context. In common law jurisdictions, the functional equivalent is typically the forthcoming bond or replevin bond; the precise terminology varies by state and by whether the seizure arises under execution, attachment, or customs process.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Contracts & Commercial Law Encyclopedia: Suretyship — Performance Bonds and Payment Bonds (Construction Context) [contracts_168] — for background on surety bond mechanics and obligor-surety relationships generally.