Definition
A Latin phrase meaning "on the demise of." Used historically as a formal pleading prefix in actions of ejectment to identify the lessor of the plaintiff — that is, the person on whose behalf the fictitious or actual demise (lease) was alleged, and in whose name the right to possession of land was ultimately being asserted.
In the classic common law ejectment action, the plaintiff was typically a fictitious person (the "casual ejector") who claimed to have been ousted from land by another fictitious defendant. The real party whose title was being tested appeared as the "lessor of the plaintiff," and the declaration would be styled to show that the action was brought "ex dimissione" of that named real party — for example, "ex dimissione John Smith" — making clear whose title and right of entry was actually at issue. The phrase thus performed a structural legal function: it announced the real claimant behind the fictional machinery of the ejectment action.
Common Confusion
Ex dimissione is easily confused with ex parte, another Latin phrase appearing in case captions and legal headings. The two are unrelated in function. Ex parte indicates a proceeding involving only one side; ex dimissione identifies the lessor-plaintiff in an ejectment action and has no procedural implication of one-sided process. Historical case reporters sometimes abbreviated ex dimissione as "ex dem." — researchers encountering "ex dem." in old reports should recognize it as this phrase, not a variant of any ex parte formula.
Why It Matters in Research
The phrase appears almost exclusively in pre-reform English and American ejectment case law, making it a reliable chronological marker. If you encounter ex dimissione (or its abbreviation "ex dem.") in a case caption or pleading, you are almost certainly working with material predating the procedural reforms of the nineteenth century that abolished the fictitious action of ejectment — the English Common Law Procedure Act 1852 in England, and analogous American reforms that varied by state across roughly the same period.
In Law Mind corpus research, the phrase is most likely to surface in:
— Early American reports reproducing English common law pleading forms.
— Colonial and early republic land title disputes, where ejectment was the standard vehicle for testing competing claims to real property.
— Historical treatise discussions of ejectment procedure, particularly those drawing on Blackstone's Commentaries or the Registrum Omnium Brevium (the Reg. Orig. cited by Burrill).
Researchers should be aware that a case styled with "ex dimissione" in the caption does not mean the named individual is the party who filed the action in the modern sense. The lessor of the plaintiff held the substantive title interest; the nominal plaintiff was a legal fiction. Misreading the caption as identifying the actual litigant will distort any analysis of party standing, privity, or the real interests at stake.
Because ejectment was the primary common law method for resolving title disputes, ex dimissione cases frequently carry significant property law holdings that remain relevant to chain-of-title analysis even when the procedural vehicle is obsolete.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines the phrase tersely as "on the demise" and cites the Registrum Omnium Brevium (Reg. Orig.) at folios 75b and 163b — a medieval English register of writs that served as a foundational reference for pleading forms. Burrill's brevity reflects the phrase's purely technical and formal character: it carried no contested legal meaning of its own, but was instead a fixed formula whose function was wholly determined by its context within ejectment pleading.
Historical dictionaries generally do not elaborate on ex dimissione beyond this identification because the phrase had no life outside the ejectment action. Its meaning was transparent to any trained common law pleader of the period, requiring no interpretive gloss. Modern legal dictionaries largely omit it, reflecting the obsolescence of the ejectment fiction itself.
Jurisdictional Note
The phrase is essentially an artifact of English common law procedure and its American reception. American jurisdictions that retained common law ejectment forms longest — particularly in the South and in states slow to adopt reformed pleading codes — will show ex dimissione in case reporters well into the nineteenth century. Jurisdictions that adopted early procedural codes modeled on New York's Field Code (1848) abandoned the form more quickly.