Definition
A judicial writ of English common law origin that lay against a defendant who, after a verdict had been found against him for land, maliciously destroyed buildings or uprooted trees on the property before the prevailing party could take possession. The writ could issue either before or after final judgment and was designed to prevent a losing party from committing deliberate waste against the land he was about to be compelled to surrender. The remedy addressed the specific mischief of vindictive or retaliatory destruction by a dispossessed party.
Common Confusion
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry conflates this writ with a separate definition of extortion in the same passage, an apparent editorial error in that source. The two subjects are unrelated. Extirpatione concerns waste and destruction of real property pending or following a land verdict; extortion concerns the wrongful taking of money or property under color of office. Researchers encountering the Rapalje & Lawrence entry should treat the extortion passage as a distinct, mis-appended definition rather than as part of the writ's own meaning.
Why It Matters in Research
This term represents a narrow, archaic writ tied specifically to English common law land litigation procedure. It has no meaningful American reception history and will appear almost exclusively in English sources predating the nineteenth century. Researchers will encounter it in treatises on writs and forms of action, not in American case reporters or statutes.
The primary authority cited across all three source dictionaries is Registrum Judiciale (Reg. Jud.), a register of judicial writs. The page references vary slightly across editions — 13 and 56 in the first edition of Black's and in Rapalje & Lawrence, and 18 and 56 in Black's second edition. Researchers consulting the original register should be alert to this discrepancy, which likely reflects either a transcription error in one edition or variation between manuscript and printed versions of the Registrum. Neither page reference has been independently verified in a modern critical edition.
Because this writ belongs to the old English forms-of-action system abolished by the Judicature Acts of 1873–1875 in England and largely superseded in American jurisdictions by code pleading well before that date, the term carries no operative legal force in modern practice. Its research value is historical and comparative: understanding the procedural remedies available to protect land-judgment creditors against deliberate destruction illuminates the background of modern doctrines governing waste, injunctive relief pending judgment, and the duties of a party ordered to surrender real property.
Researchers working on the history of the law of waste will find this writ instructive as evidence that courts recognized the distinct problem of retaliatory destruction — as opposed to passive neglect — at an early date, and fashioned a specific writ rather than absorbing the remedy into general waste doctrine.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries are in substantive agreement on the core definition. The writ's trigger (a verdict found against the defendant for land), its subject matter (malicious overthrow of houses or extirpation of trees), and its timing (before or after judgment) are consistently described. The variation in Reg. Jud. page references noted above is the only material discrepancy among the sources.
None of the dictionaries address the procedural mechanics of how the writ was served, what relief it granted, or whether it carried contempt or damages consequences — gaps consistent with the general treatment of obsolete writs in nineteenth-century legal dictionaries, which typically recorded the writ's occasion rather than its enforcement machinery. Researchers needing fuller procedural detail will need to consult the Registrum Judiciale directly or secondary treatments of the English register of writs.
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry's appended extortion definition appears to be a formatting or compilation error, as noted above, and should not be read as part of the writ's definition.
Jurisdictional Note
Extirpatione is a writ of English origin with no documented adoption in American jurisdictions. American researchers will encounter it only in English historical sources and in English-derived treatise literature. Modern equivalents in American law — such as injunctions against waste pending litigation or statutory remedies for destruction of property subject to a pending judgment — bear no formal relationship to this writ.