Definition
A bondsman or bail for a party in a legal action. In Roman and civil law practice, a fie (from fidejussor) was a surety who undertook to guarantee that a defendant would satisfy any judgment rendered against him — specifically, that the amount adjudged to the plaintiff would be paid. This form of surety was distinct from mere appearance bail; the fidejussor's undertaking ran to the substance of the judgment itself (judicatum solvi), not merely to the defendant's presence in court.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): An exclamation expressing distaste, disgust, or outrage, sometimes followed by "on" or "upon."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "An exclamation denoting contempt or dislike."
The legal term "fie" as a form of "fidejussor" bears no relationship whatsoever to the common exclamation. A researcher encountering "fie" in a legal manuscript or glossary context should not read it as an expression of sentiment; it is a technical term of art designating a category of surety, derived from the Latin fidejussor and appearing most often in civil law and early common law pleading contexts.
Common Confusion
"Fie" as it appears in Burrill is an abbreviated or anglicized rendering of fidejussor. Researchers may encounter the full Latin form (fidejussor, fidejussores), shortened forms (fie, fide), or English paraphrases ("bondsman," "surety," "special bail") referring to the same office. These should not be conflated with mainpernors, pledges, or common bail, each of which carried distinct obligations and appeared at different procedural stages. Fidejussors were sureties specifically bound to satisfaction of judgment, not merely to appearance.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in sources drawing on Roman and civil law, and in English common law texts that engage with continental procedural concepts — particularly treatises from the medieval and early modern period. Researchers using Burrill or similar historical dictionaries should treat "fie" as a pointer toward the fuller fidejussor doctrine rather than a self-contained entry.
The key navigational trap is the abbreviated form: "fie" looks like a scribal shorthand or an anomalous spelling, and without context it can be missed entirely or dismissed. In manuscript sources, legal Latin glossaries, and early printed abridgments, the term may appear in contracted form with no obvious connection to suretyship doctrine.
The Burrill entry references Fleta (lib. 2, c. 60, § 11), Justinian's Institutes (4.11), the Digest (2.8), and Blackstone's Commentaries (3 Bl. Com. 291) — a span that signals the term's reach from Roman law through English common law. Researchers tracing bail and suretyship doctrine historically should follow those sources directly, as Burrill's entry is truncated and the full procedural context (including the distinction between defendants appearing by attorney versus in person) matters for understanding when fidejussors were required at all.
This term does not persist in modern American or English legal usage as "fie." Its doctrinal content survives under suretyship, judgment creditor/debtor practice, and the law of bail, but the label itself is archaic.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's entry, though brief, accurately situates the term within its civil law framework. The citation to Justinian's Institutes and the Digest confirms the Roman law foundation; the Blackstone reference confirms its absorption into English legal discourse. Burrill correctly distinguishes the fidejussor's undertaking — judicatum solvi, to pay what is adjudged — from more limited forms of bail whose obligation was merely to produce the defendant.
What Burrill does not develop (the entry appears to break off) is the procedural distinction between personal appearance and appearance by attorney, which governed whether fidejussors were required in the first place. For that, the Institutes and Fleta must be consulted directly. Modern legal dictionaries have largely dropped "fie" as an entry, folding its substance under fidejussor or surety.
Jurisdictional Note
This term belongs primarily to civil law and early English common law procedure and has no operative meaning in contemporary American state or federal practice. It is a research term, not a practice term.