EJECTION

6 definitions found across Law Mind sources

EJECTIONAuthored
The Law Mind • 1013 words
Definition
A turning out of possession. In law, ejection refers to the physical removal of a person from land, property, or a conveyance. The term appears in two principal legal contexts: 1. Real property: The dispossession of a person from land or premises — the underlying act from which the action of ejectment historically arose. 2. Common carriers: The removal of a passenger from a train, bus, or other public conveyance, whether lawfully (for disruptive or dangerous conduct) or unlawfully (arbitrarily or improperly). This usage developed extensively in 19th- and 20th-century tort and carrier law and remains the more active context in modern litigation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of ejecting; that which is ejected. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of ejecting or casting out; discharge; expulsion; evacuation. Also, the act or process of discharging anything from the body. The everyday word "ejection" covers any forcible expulsion — volcanic, biological, or physical. In law, the term carries a technical heritage tied specifically to dispossession from land or removal from a carrier's conveyance. A researcher encountering "ejection" in a legal source should not treat it as a generic synonym for removal; the word signals either a property-law context (the predicate act behind ejectment) or a carrier-law context with its own body of duty-and-remedy rules.
Common Confusion
Ejection and ejectment are related but distinct. Ejection is the act — the physical turning out. Ejectment is the common-law action brought to recover possession of land wrongfully withheld, which historically required the plaintiff to allege (often fictitiously) that they had been ejected. Modern practice has largely abolished the fictional elements of ejectment, but the underlying distinction between the act (ejection) and the remedy (ejectment) remains analytically useful. Researchers should not treat the two terms as interchangeable in historical sources, where precision mattered to pleading.
Why It Matters in Research
The term does real work in two separate bodies of law, and conflating them in a research context causes confusion. In real property sources, "ejection" is largely a term of art embedded within ejectment doctrine. Pre-19th-century materials — particularly those following Blackstone's treatment at 3 Bl. Comm. 199 — use ejection to describe the wrong that triggered the action. Because classical ejectment pleading was heavily fictional (the plaintiff alleged a fictitious lease, entry, and ouster), references to "ejection" in old forms and precedents may describe a legal fiction rather than an actual physical event. Researchers working with early American or English real property records should keep this in mind. In common carrier law, ejection becomes a distinct and substantial topic in the post-Civil War period, particularly in American courts. Railroad and streetcar cases produced a significant body of law on when a carrier could lawfully remove a passenger (non-payment of fare, disorderly conduct, refusal to comply with lawful rules) and what damages flowed from wrongful ejection. The carrier's duty to the public gave wrongful ejection claims a quasi-civil rights dimension in some jurisdictions, especially where race was a factor. Researchers using 19th-century case reporters or digests should expect ejection to appear as a standalone topic heading in carrier sections, not merely as a sub-issue under ejectment. Burrill preserves the related term EJECTIONE CUSTODIAE (ejectment of ward), a writ lying against one who turned out a guardian during the heir's minority, traceable to the Statute of Westminster II. This is now obsolete but surfaces in historical property and guardian-ward research.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four source dictionaries converge on Blackstone's formulation — "a turning out of possession," 3 Bl. Comm. 199 — as the foundational definition. This uniformity reflects the term's deep anchor in English real property law and suggests that, at least through the period these dictionaries cover, the core meaning was stable and uncontested. Bouvier is the most expansive of the four, extending the definition to the common carrier context and noting the carrier's dual obligation: not only the power but the duty to take reasonable and proper means to ensure passenger safety and comfort. This is the only source among the four to bridge the property-law meaning and the carrier-law meaning, and it reflects Bouvier's generally more practical orientation toward contemporary legal problems. Burrill adds the most historical texture, preserving the Latin form ejectio, the related writ EJECTIONE CUSTODIAE, and citations to Fitzherbert's Natura Brevium and Littleton — useful anchors for researchers tracing guardian-ward doctrine or early English land law. What the historical dictionaries collectively miss is the subsequent explosion of American carrier-ejection litigation, which postdates or sits at the margins of their coverage. For that body of law, researchers should move directly to 19th- and early 20th-century American digests and treatises on carriers rather than relying on these dictionary entries as guides.
Jurisdictional Note
Carrier-ejection law developed unevenly across American jurisdictions. Some states imposed heightened damages for wrongful ejection, particularly where the removal occurred at an unsafe location or in inclement weather. The legal standards for lawful ejection — and the remedies for unlawful ejection — varied enough that a 50-state survey approach is warranted for any serious carrier-law research. English law on the same topic followed a parallel but not identical trajectory.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See EJECTMENT for the common-law action and its procedural history. See COMMON CARRIERS — PASSENGER RIGHTS for the carrier-ejection doctrine and the standards governing lawful removal of passengers.
Related Terms
Ejectment — the common-law action to recover possession of land; the primary legal remedy arising from ejection in the property context Ouster — dispossession of a co-tenant or rightful possessor; closely related in property law Forcible Entry and Detainer — statutory remedy for unlawful dispossession; modern successor to some ejectment functions Ejectione Custodiae — obsolete writ for ejection of a guardian during minority of the heir Dispossession — broader term encompassing ejection and other forms of loss of possession Common Carriers — the legal category within which carrier-ejection doctrine operates Eviction — the landlord-tenant analog; removal of a tenant from leased premises
EJECTIONmain
Black's Law Dictionary • 1891
A turning out of posses- whoremonger. Blount. sion. 3 Bl. Comm. 199. In old En-
EJECTIONmain
Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928
Turning out of posses- sion. 3 Bla. Com. 199. The term is in general use with reference to the removal of an obnoxious person from the conveyance of a common carrier... It must be conceded that the carrier, as an incident to its public employment, not only has the power, but is bound to take all reasonable and proper means to insure the safety and provide for the comfort and con- venience of its passengers, and it follows that it has the right, in the exercise of this au- thority and duty, to repress and prohibit all disorderly conduct in its vehicles, and to ex- pel or exclude therefrom any person whose conduct or condition is such as to render acts of impropriety, rudeness, indecency, or disturbance either inevitable or reason- ably probable; Ray, Pas. Carriers 165. A person who steps upon a car after he has once been put off is a trespasser, re- gardless of his right to be on the car in the first instance; 40 Ill. App. 421. In ejecting a passenger from a car no more force than is necessary should be used; 35 Neb. 74. An action on the case in tort is proper against a carrier for wrongfully ejecting from its train a passenger who has paid his fare, though no force is used; 36 W. Va. 318. As to ejection of passengers for refusal to pay fare, see 12 Lawy. Rep. Ann. 823; PAS- SENGERS; COMMON CARRIERS OF PASSEN- GERS; TICKET. EJECTIONE CUSTODIE (Lat.). A writ of which lay for a guardian to recover the land or person of his ward, or both, where he had been deprived of the posses- sion of them. Fitzh. N. B. 139, L.; Co. Litt. 199. EJECTIONE FIRME (Lat. ejectment from a farm). This writ lay where lands or tenements were let for a term of years, and afterwards the lessor, reversioner, re- mainderman, or a stranger ejected or ousted the lessee of his term. The plaintiff, if he prevailed, recovered the term with damages. Hence Blackstone calls this a mixed action, somewhat between real and personal; for therein are two things re- covered, as well restitution of the "term of years," as damages for the ouster or wrong. This writ is the original foundation of the action of ejectment. 3 Sharsw. Bla. Com. 199; Fitzh. N. B. 220, F, G; Gibson, Eject. 3; Stearn, Real Act. 53, 400. EJECTMENT (Lat. e, out of, jacere, to throw, cast; ejicere, to cast out, to eject). In Practice. A form of action by which possessory titles to corporeal hereditaments may be tried and possession obtained. A form of action which lies to regain the possession of real property, with damages for the unlawful detention. In its origin, during the reign of Edw. III., this action was an action of trespass which lay for a ten- ant for years, to recover damages against a person who had ousted him of his possession without right. To the judgment for damages the courts soon added a judgment for possession, upon which the plaintiff became entitled to a writ of possession. The action of de ejectione firmæ (q. v.), was framed to meet the case of the termor, and just at the close of the middle ages it was held that under it he could re- cover his term. As to its history see 2 Poll. & Maitl. EJЕСTMENT 105. As the disadvantages of real actions as a means of recovering land for the benefit of the real owner from the possession of one who held them without title became a serious obstacle to their use, this form of action was taken advantage of by Ch. J. Rolle to accomplish the same result. In the original action, the plaintiff had been obliged to prove a lease from the person shown to have title, an entry under the lease, and an ouster by some third person. The modified action as sanc- tioned by Rolle was brought by a fictitious person, as lessee against another fictitious person (the casual ejector) alleged to have committed the ouster. Service was made upon the tenant in possession, with a notice annexed from the casual ejector to ap- pear and defend. If the tenant failed to do this, Judgment was given by default and the claimant put In possession. If he did appear, he was allowed to defend only by entering into the consent rule, by which he confessed the fictitious lease, entry, and ouster to have been made, leaving only the title in question. The tenant by a subsequent statute was obliged, under heavy penalties, to give notice to his lessor of the pendency of the action. The action has been superseded in England under the Common Law Procedure Act (1852, $$ 170-220) by a writ, in a prescribed form, addressed, on the claimant's part, to the person or persons in posses- sion, by name, and generally "to all persons entitled to defend the possession" of the premises therein described; commanding such of them as deny the claimant's title to appear in court and defend the possession of the property. Not only the person to whom the writ is directed, but any other person (on filing an affidavit that he or his tenant is in posses- sion, and obtaining the leave of the court or a judge), is allowed to appear and defend. Ejectment has been materially modified in many of the
EJECTIONmain
Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867
[L. Lat. ejectio, from ejicere, q. v.] A turning out of possession. 3 Bl. Com. 199. EJECTIONE CUSTODIEÆ. L. Lat. [L. Fr. ejectment de garde.] In old practice. Ejectment of ward. A writ which anciently lay against him who turned out a guardian from any land during the minority of the heir. Reg. Orig. 162. F. N. B. 139, L. Litt. sect. 323. First mentioned in the statute of Westminster 2. 2 Reeves' Hist. Eng. Law, 208, 325.
EJECTIONn.
Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913
The act of ejecting or casting out; discharge; expulsion; evacuation. "Vast ejection of ashes." Eustace. "The ejection of a word." Johnson. The act or process of discharging anything from the body, particularly the excretions. The state of being ejected or cast out; dispossession; banishment.
ejectionnoun
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.
The act of ejecting. | That which is ejected.

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