Definition
"Found" operates in law as a term of legal status and jurisdictional significance, not merely as the past tense of "find." It answers a specific question: is this person or entity *here*, in a legally cognizable sense, such that courts and process may reach them?
1. As applied to natural persons: A person is "found" within a state or jurisdiction when physically present there at the relevant time. This is a factual determination. Physical presence satisfies the test; domicile or residence is not required. The concept matters most in the context of personal service of process, extradition, and the jurisdiction of courts over defendants.
2. As applied to corporations: A corporation is "found" within a jurisdiction when it is conducting business there in a sufficiently systematic and authorized manner — through officers, agents, or statutory authority — so as to subject itself to local suit and to valid substituted or constructive service of process. Physical presence of the corporate entity itself is legally impossible; presence is instead inferred from the quality and regularity of its business activities within the forum.
3. As a verdict or finding: A court, jury, or administrative body "finds" facts when it makes a formal determination of what is established by evidence. The past tense "found" appears in verdict language ("the jury found the defendant guilty"), in administrative adjudications, and in judicial opinions when describing factual holdings. This usage is distinct from the jurisdictional sense above.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Simple past and past participle of "find."
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Imp. & p. p. of Find.
In ordinary English, "found" is purely grammatical — the past tense of "find," carrying no independent meaning. In law, it can carry independent legal weight as a term of status (is this defendant "found" within this jurisdiction?) or as a term of adjudication (what did the trier of fact "find"?). A researcher reading a historical pleading or opinion that states a defendant was "found" in a particular state is encountering a jurisdictional assertion, not a narrative description.
Common Confusion
"Found" in the jurisdictional sense should not be confused with "domiciled," "resident," or "incorporated." A person may be found in a state where they are not domiciled; a corporation may be found in a state where it is not incorporated. Conversely, domicile or incorporation does not automatically establish being "found" for all procedural purposes. The historical writ return *non est inventus* — "he is not found" — is the negative of this concept and signals that a defendant could not be located for service, not that they lack domicile.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers encounter "found" most critically in three contexts, and conflating them produces error.
**Jurisdictional research:** Pre-twentieth-century cases and pleadings frequently condition jurisdiction, venue, and process on whether a party was "found" within the forum. The standard for corporations evolved significantly — early cases applied a narrow physical-presence test; later doctrine (especially post-International Shoe) reframed the inquiry around minimum contacts. A historical source using "found" to describe corporate presence may be articulating a standard now superseded. Do not read early "found" language through a modern minimum-contacts lens without checking the era.
**Service of process records:** Sheriff's returns, marshal's returns, and process records use "found" technically. *Non est inventus* — the formal return that a defendant was not found — triggers specific procedural consequences (alternative service, default rules, tolling). These returns appear throughout historical court records and colonial-era sources. Researchers reading original process records must recognize "found" and "not found" as terms of art controlling procedural consequences, not narrative descriptions.
**Immigration and asylum law:** The phrase "well-founded fear" is a distinct and technical usage requiring separate analysis. A fear is "well-founded" in asylum law when it has both a subjective component (the applicant genuinely holds the fear) and an objective component (the fear is objectively reasonable given country conditions). This is a constitutional and statutory standard with a substantial body of administrative and judicial interpretation. See Encyclopedia Cross-Reference below.
**Trover and "finding" property:** Anderson's cross-reference to TROVER signals a fourth context. The common law action of trover originated in the fiction that a defendant had "found" the plaintiff's goods and wrongfully converted them. Historical pleadings in trover uniformly include language that the defendant "found" certain property — this is a formal pleading fiction, not a factual allegation. Researchers reading historical trover pleadings should recognize the "finding" language as conventional, not descriptive.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's entry captures the jurisdictional usage precisely and remains accurate for its period: physical presence for persons; business activity through agents or statutory authority for corporations. The citation to 55 Fed. Rep. 751 grounds the corporate standard in late-nineteenth-century federal doctrine, a period when courts were actively working out when a corporation could be said to be "present" in a forum state. Bouvier correctly signals that the corporate standard is more demanding — and more contested — than the personal standard.
Anderson's entry is a pure cross-reference to FIND, OFFICE, and TROVER, which suggests that in Anderson's framework "found" had no independent doctrinal weight sufficient to warrant its own entry. The TROVER cross-reference is the most useful: it flags the pleading-fiction usage that researchers unfamiliar with common law forms might otherwise misread as a factual allegation.
Neither dictionary addresses the "well-founded fear" standard in immigration law, which is a twentieth-century statutory and administrative development entirely outside the temporal scope of both sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Asylum — Persecution Standard, Past Persecution Presumption, and the Well-Founded Fear Test (The Law Mind Immigration Law Encyclopedia) — for the specialized "well-founded fear" standard in asylum adjudication.