EVICT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

EVICTAuthored

The Law Mind • 1142 words

Definition

To evict is to dispossess a person of land or premises through legal process or by operation of superior legal right. Modern usage centers almost entirely on the landlord-tenant relationship: a landlord evicts a tenant by obtaining a court judgment — typically through summary proceedings such as unlawful detainer or forcible entry and detainer — and enforcing that judgment to remove the tenant from the leased property.

In older usage, particularly under the civil law and in early common law conveyancing, the term carried a broader meaning: to recover property from any person in possession by virtue of a judicial sentence or paramount title, regardless of the tenancy context. A purchaser of land could be "evicted" by a prior owner with superior title; such an eviction would trigger the seller's warranty obligations.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To expel one or more people from their property; to force them to move out.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To dispossess by judicial process or by paramount right; to eject; to oust. Also, obsolete: to evince or prove.

The common and legal meanings are close but not identical in one important respect. Ordinary speech treats eviction as any forced removal from property — including self-help measures such as a landlord changing locks or removing a tenant's belongings. The legal term, historically and technically, requires judicial process or the assertion of paramount legal right. A landlord who removes a tenant without a court order has not evicted the tenant in the legal sense; in most modern jurisdictions such conduct is itself unlawful. Researchers reading older sources should also note Webster's obsolete meaning — "to evince" or "to prove" — which occasionally surfaces in pre-nineteenth-century texts and can cause confusion.

Common Confusion

EVICT vs. EJECT: Ejectment is the common law action by which a claimant recovered possession of real property from someone wrongfully holding it. Eviction was often the outcome of a successful ejectment action, but ejectment describes the legal proceeding while eviction describes the dispossession itself. In older authorities the terms appear almost interchangeably; in modern practice, ejectment (where it survives) applies to disputes over title and possession between adverse claimants, while eviction applies to landlord-tenant removal proceedings.

EVICT vs. CONSTRUCTIVE EVICTION: Actual eviction involves physical removal of the tenant or exclusion from the premises. Constructive eviction occurs when a landlord's conduct — typically failure to maintain habitable conditions — so substantially interferes with the tenant's use and enjoyment that the tenant is effectively forced to vacate. No court order or physical removal is required. Conflating the two distorts both the tenant's remedies and the landlord's obligations.

Why It Matters in Research

The term's meaning has shifted substantially across time and context, which creates traps for researchers working across historical periods.

In early common law sources and civil law authorities, eviction operates primarily in the warranty and title context: a tenant or purchaser evicted by a party with paramount title could look to the warrantor for compensation or substituted land. This is the sense in which Coke uses the term (10 Co. 128a), and it is the frame Rapalje & Lawrence emphasize. Burrill explicitly marks the transition — "the term is now applied to a tenant" — signaling that by the mid-nineteenth century the landlord-tenant meaning had become dominant.

Researchers tracing landlord-tenant law in the Law Mind corpus should treat eviction as an umbrella term with at least three distinct legal meanings in play depending on the period: (1) recovery of land by paramount title (historical, warranty context); (2) actual eviction by judicial process in summary proceedings (modern landlord-tenant); and (3) constructive eviction by landlord conduct (modern doctrine, no physical removal required). Sources before roughly 1850 may use the term in sense (1) without any implication of a tenancy relationship.

Procedural variation across jurisdictions is significant. Summary eviction proceedings — unlawful detainer, forcible entry and detainer, summary possession — are creatures of statute and vary considerably in name, procedure, and the defenses available to tenants. A historical source describing eviction procedure in one state may not accurately represent the rules in another. The Law Mind corpus includes sources from multiple jurisdictions; note the jurisdiction before drawing procedural conclusions.

Retaliatory eviction doctrine — the principle that a landlord may not evict a tenant in retaliation for reporting housing code violations or exercising legal rights — is an almost entirely modern development, largely post-1960. It will not appear in older treatises and is largely absent from the historical dictionary sources below.

Historical Dictionary Support

The three dictionary sources converge on the core meaning but emphasize different aspects reflecting their audiences and periods.

Black's and Burrill agree precisely on the civil law formulation — recovery from a person by virtue of judicial sentence — and both quote the same passage from Coke (10 Co. 128a) for the common law application. Burrill adds the Latin maxim from Pothier ("Evincere est aliquid vincendo auferre" — to evict is to take something away by conquering) and explicitly notes the terminological shift toward the tenant context, making Burrill the most useful of the three for tracing the word's evolution.

Rapalje & Lawrence take a narrower angle, focusing on the paramount title scenario — a possessor under A.'s title turned out by B. with superior title — and cross-referencing warranty and exchange. Their entry is most useful for researchers working on conveyancing and title warranty questions rather than landlord-tenant disputes.

None of the three dictionary sources address constructive eviction as a doctrine, retaliatory eviction, or the modern statutory framework for summary proceedings. Researchers should not read their silence as indicating these doctrines did not exist in any form; constructive eviction has roots in nineteenth-century equity, but the dictionaries simply do not reach it.

Jurisdictional Note

The name and procedure for summary eviction proceedings varies by state: unlawful detainer, forcible entry and detainer, summary possession, and dispossessory are all in use. The substantive grounds for eviction, notice requirements, and available tenant defenses (including retaliatory eviction) are largely statutory and differ materially across jurisdictions. Sources describing eviction law should be read with the originating jurisdiction clearly in mind.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

property_28: Landlord-Tenant — Eviction — Summary Proceedings and Unlawful Detainer (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)
property_23: Landlord-Tenant — Constructive Eviction (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)
property_29: Landlord-Tenant — Retaliatory Eviction Protections (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)

EVICTmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In the civil law. To recover anything from a person by virtue of the judgment of a court or judicial sentence. At common law. To dispossess, or turn out of the possession of lands by process of law. Also to recover land by judgment at law. "If the land is evicted, no rent shall be paid." 10 Coke, 128a.

EVICTmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

This word is used in the books where a person in possession of land under a title derived from A. is turned out of possession by B., who has a title paramount. Co. Litt. 173b. See EXCHANGE, & 2; WARRANTY. 2. An important kind of extra-judicial evidence is that known as conveyancers' evidence, namely, that evidence which by the practice of conveyancers is required in the investigation of the title to property, in proof of facts on which the goodness of the vendor's title depends; such are original title deeds, probates of wills, certificates of births, deaths and marriages, statutory declarations, &c. (See Cov. EVICTION.-A popular term for turnConv. Ev., passim. The old writers freing a tenant of land out of possession, quently describe title-deeds as "evidences;" either by re-entry or by legal proceedings, "the evidences are, as it were, the sinewes such as an action of ejectment. It is of the land;" Co. Litt. 6a, 213a; Ducange, usually applied to ouster from real props. v. Evidentiæ.) Evidence by statutory erty only, but it is not inapplicable to the declaration is sometimes called "declaradispossession from personal property also, tory evidence." The covenants for seisin in fee-simple and for good right to convey usually inserted in deeds are, in substance, covenants against eviction, in this respect differing from the covenant for quiet enjoyment. (Child v. Stenning, 11 Ch. D. 82). It is competent for a landlord to evict his tenant for proper cause; but a landlord Judicial evidence is of the following kinds3. Direct.-Evidence is direct where the fact proved by it (the evidentiary fact) is the fact in issue, or the fact required to be proved (see Best Ev. 25); as where on a trial for murder a witness deposes that he saw the prisoner kill the deceased. ray also be guilty of a wrongful eviction 4. Indirect evidence is where the of his tenant, as where without proper existence of the fact in issue is inferred cause he either actually, i. e. physically, from the evidentiary fact. Such evidence evicts him, or does any act of a permanent is (1) conclusive, when the existence of character with the intention of evicting the tenant, and which is inconsistent with the latter's returning into or continuing in possession. EVICTION, (defined). 5 Ind. 393; 15 La. Ann. 514, 515; 106 Mass. 201, 203. (what is an). 25 Minn. 525, 527; 4 Wend. (N. Y.) 423. the fact in issue follows either by a necessary consequence of the laws of nature or from a rule of law (as where an alibi is proved, or the certificate of incorporation of a company is produced); or (2) circumstantial or presumptive, where it only rests on a greater or less degree of probability, as where a person accused of

EVICTmain

Burrill's Law Dictionary • 1867

[from Lat. evincere, q. v.] In the civil law. To take something from a person, by virtue of a judicial sentence or recovery at law. Evincere est aliquid vincendo auferre. Pothier, Contr. of Sale, part 2, ch. 1, sect. 2, art. 1. In the common law. To recover land by process of law. "If the land is evicted, no rent shall be paid." 10 Co. 128 a. The term is now applied to a tenant against whom land is recovered, or who is otherwise compelled to leave the demised premises. "If the tenant be evicted from the lands demised to him, by a title paramount, before the rent falls due, he will be discharged from the payment of the rent." 3 Kent's Com. 464. See Eviction.

EVICTv.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

To dispossess by a judicial process; to dispossess by paramount right or claim of such right; to eject; to oust. The law of England would speedily evict them out of their possession. Sir. J. Davies. To evince; to prove. [Obs.] Cheyne.

evictverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC 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.

To expel (one or more people) from their property; to force (one or more people) to move out. | To eject from a memory cache to reduce the cache's size.

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