EJERCITORIA - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

EJERCITORIAAuthored

The Law Mind • 696 words

Definition

In Spanish law, an action brought against the owner of a vessel based on contracts or obligations incurred by the ship's master (captain) in the course of managing the ship. The typical subjects of the action include debts for repairs, rigging, provisioning, and victualling the vessel. The owner's liability arises not from any personal act but from the master's authority as the appointed agent of maritime enterprise.

The term derives from Spanish maritime practice and corresponds directly to the actio exercitoria of Roman civil law — the action against the exercitor navis, the person who puts a ship into commercial service. The logic in both systems is the same: the person who profits from operating a vessel bears liability for the lawful acts of the agent placed in command of it.

Common Confusion

The Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) entry retrieved in connection with this term is a mismatch — it describes the action of ejectment (the fictitious common-law action for recovery of land), not ejercitoria. Researchers using older compiled or digitized dictionary sources should verify that the entry text actually corresponds to the headword. The two terms share no substantive relationship.

Why It Matters in Research

Ejercitoria is a term of Spanish civil and maritime law and will appear primarily in sources connected to jurisdictions shaped by the Spanish legal tradition — most relevantly, Louisiana, Texas, California, and other former Spanish or Mexican territories, as well as Puerto Rico and historical Philippine materials. Researchers working in pre-statehood or early territorial legal records in these jurisdictions may encounter the term in admiralty and commercial contexts where Spanish law governed or was cited as persuasive authority.

The direct Roman law parallel (actio exercitoria) is not merely historical color — in jurisdictions that received civil law through Spanish transmission, the Roman categories often remained operative frameworks in judicial reasoning long after formal adoption of territorial or state codes. A researcher tracing maritime liability doctrine in Louisiana civil law, for example, may need to move between the Roman sources, Spanish treatises, and early American admiralty decisions that cite both.

Note also that the master-owner liability principle underlying ejercitoria fed into the broader development of agency and maritime law in the American context. The concept that a shipowner is bound by the master's contracts for necessary repairs and supplies appears in nineteenth-century American admiralty practice under its own doctrinal name, but the Spanish and Roman antecedents are frequently cited in treatise literature of that period.

Researchers should be alert to variant spellings in historical Spanish-language sources. The corresponding Roman action may be indexed under actio exercitoria, exercitorian action, or simply exercitor in Latin-derived sources.

Historical Dictionary Support

Black's (1st Ed.) and Bouvier agree on the core definition without meaningful divergence: both identify ejercitoria as the Spanish-law action against a shipowner for the master's contracts, and both note the Roman law parallel. Black's (1st Ed.) cites Mackeldey's Roman Law (§ 512) as the connective authority between the Spanish form and the Roman actio exercitoria — a citation that is accurate and useful for researchers wanting to trace the doctrine to its civil law roots.

Bouvier's formulation is marginally more specific, enumerating the typical contract purposes (repairing, rigging, victualling) rather than speaking generally of "repairs or supplies." Neither entry addresses the procedural mechanics of the Spanish action in detail, the question of whether the owner's liability was strict or fault-based, or the extent to which ejercitoria survived as a live doctrine in American territorial courts. Historical dictionaries do not cover post-Spanish-cession developments; researchers must supplement with territorial and state court records and period treatises on Spanish law.

Jurisdictional Note

Ejercitoria is relevant primarily in jurisdictions that operated under Spanish law before incorporation into the United States, and in Puerto Rico, where Spanish civil law tradition remains foundational. In the common-law states, the underlying liability principle was absorbed into admiralty doctrine without retaining the Spanish terminology.

EJERCITORIAmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In Spanish law. The name of an action lying against a ship's owner, upon the contracts or obligations made by the master for repairs or supplies. It corresponds to the actio exercitoria of the Roman law. Mackeld. Rom. Law, § 512.

EJERCITORIAmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

In Spanish Law. The action which lies against the owner of a vessel for debts contracted by the master, or contracts entered into by him, for the purpose of repairing, rigging, and victual- ling the same.

EJERCITORIAmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

firma) which lay for the recovery of the possession of land, and for damages for the unlawful detention of its possession. The action was highly fictitious, being in theory only for the recovery of a term for years, and brought by a purely fictitious person, as lessee in a supposed lease from the real party in interest. The latter’s title, however,, must be established in order to warrant a recovery, and the establishment of such title, though nominally a mere incident, is in reality the object of the action. Hence this convenient form of suit came to be adopted as the usual method of trying titles to land. See 8 Bl. Comm. 199. French y. Robb, 67 N. J. Law, 260, 51 Atl. 509, 57 L. R. A. 956. 91 Am. St. Rep. 483; Crockett v. Lashbrook, 5 T. B. Mon. (Ky.) 538, 17 Am. Dec. 98; Wilson v. Wightman, 36 App. Div. 41, 55 N. Y. Supp. 806; Hoover vy. King, 43 Or. 281, 72 Pac. 880, 65 L. R. A. 790, 99 Am. St. Rep. 754; Hawkins v. Reichert, 28 Cal. 536. It was the only mixed action at common law, the whole method.of proceeding in whieh was anomalous, and depended on fictions invented and upheld by the court for the convenience of justice, in order to escape from the inconvenences which were found to attend the ancient forms of real and mixed actions. It is also a form of action by which possessory titles to corporeal hereditaments may be tried and possession obtained. —Ejectment bill. <A bill in equity brought merely for the recovery of real property, together with an account of the rents and profits, without setting out any distinct ground of equity juriadtetion hence demurrable. Crane v. Conklin, 1 N. J. Eq. 353, 22 Am. Dec. 519. —Equitable ejectment. A proceeding in use in Pennsylvania, brought to enforce specific performance of a contract for the sale of land, and for some other purposes, which is in form an action of ejectment. but is in reality a substitute for a bill in equity. Riel v. Gannon, 161 Pa. 289, 29 Atl. 55; McKendry v. McKendry, 131 Pa. 24, 18 Atl. 1078, 6 L. R. A. 506.—Juse tice ejectment. <A statutory proceeding in Vermont, for the eviction of a tenant holdin - over after termination of the lease or breach o its er aia Yoss y. Stanton, 76 Vt. 365, 57 In Spanish law. The name of an action lying against a ship's owner, upon the contracts or obligations made by the master for repairs or supplies. It coresponds to the actio erercitoria of the Roman law. Mackeld. Rom. Law, § 512 - dere.

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