Definition
"In store" is a statutory term of art appearing in warehouse receipt legislation, referring to property received and held by a warehouseman or storage facility in a custodial capacity for the account of another — as distinguished from property received by a business for its own operational use. When goods are held "in store," the receiving party acts as bailee, not owner or user, and the arrangement creates the legal relationship that authorizes issuance of a warehouse receipt.
The distinction turns on purpose and character of possession: goods held "in store" are held for safekeeping or future delivery on behalf of a depositor; goods received as stock-in-trade or operational equipment are held for the receiver's own business purposes and fall outside the term's scope.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): In a retail outlet; or, in readiness or waiting.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Held in reserve; laid up for future use; in stock.
The ordinary sense of "in store" — goods sitting on a shelf, available for sale, or held in reserve — actually points in the opposite direction from the legal meaning. In common usage, a retailer's inventory sitting "in store" is the paradigm case. In law, that same inventory is precisely what is NOT held "in store" within warehouse receipt statutes, because the retailer holds it for its own commercial use rather than as a custodian for another party. Researchers relying on intuitive or common meaning will reach the wrong result.
Core Elements
For property to qualify as held "in store" under warehouse receipt statutes, courts and commentators have required:
1. Receipt by a party acting in a custodial or bailment capacity, not as owner or user of the goods.
2. Possession for the account and benefit of the depositor, not for the receiving party's own operational purposes.
3. The goods are not integrated into the receiver's stock-in-trade, equipment, or business operations.
The failure of any element removes the property from the statutory category and defeats the authority to issue a warehouse receipt against it.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in the context of warehouse receipt legislation and the law of bailment. Its primary significance is jurisdictional and definitional: statutes authorizing the issuance of warehouse receipts typically condition that authority on goods being received "in store," and courts have interpreted the phrase narrowly to exclude goods received for a business's own use.
The Kentucky decision cited in Bouvier's illustrates the core trap: a corporation that receives personal property to use as part of its own business operations — even if that property sits physically within its premises — cannot issue warehouse receipts against it, because the property was never "in store" in the legal sense. Researchers working with historical warehouse receipt disputes, corporate financing arrangements, or commodity storage cases must check whether the issuing party held goods in a purely custodial capacity.
For researchers in the Law Mind corpus, the term is most likely to surface in late nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial law materials, state statutory compilations governing warehouses, and cases involving the validity of warehouse receipts used as collateral instruments. Modern equivalents appear under Article 7 of the Uniform Commercial Code (Documents of Title), where the operative concept has been substantially codified and the phrase "in store" as such rarely appears — making historical sources essential for period-accurate research.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's provides the only historical legal dictionary treatment located in the source corpus. The entry is narrow and case-anchored: it cites a Kentucky appellate decision (106 Ky. 7) for the proposition that property received by a corporation for use in its own business — whether as stock or equipment — is not received "in store" within the meaning of the warehouse receipt statute. Bouvier's does not attempt a general definition of the phrase beyond this limiting construction.
This reflects the larger pattern in late Bouvier editions: statutory terms of art are often defined entirely through their negative applications — what they exclude — rather than through affirmative principles. Researchers should treat the Bouvier entry as a cautionary flag rather than a complete doctrinal account. The affirmative content of the term must be reconstructed from the underlying bailment and warehouse law principles that the statutes presupposed.
Jurisdictional Note
The meaning of "in store" was defined primarily by state courts interpreting their own warehouse receipt statutes before national uniformity was achieved. The Kentucky formulation in Bouvier's is illustrative but not universally controlling. Modern analysis under UCC Article 7 has largely displaced the older statutory vocabulary, though the underlying custodial-versus-operational distinction remains relevant to document-of-title validity.