Definition
To maintain means to keep something in existence, operation, or good condition; to sustain, preserve, or uphold. In law, the term carries at least three distinct meanings depending on context:
1. To maintain an action or suit: To commence, institute, or prosecute a legal proceeding. This usage implies that a valid cause of action exists supporting the proceeding. A party who "maintains" a lawsuit is not merely filing it but asserting it with legal justification.
2. To maintain a condition, structure, or system: To keep in proper repair, working order, or continued operation. This meaning governs obligations in property law, contract law, and regulatory contexts — including duties to maintain fences, roads, buildings, railways, and trade secret programs. Crucially, maintaining does not necessarily include the power to alter or relocate; it connotes preservation of what exists, not modification.
3. To maintain a position or assertion: To affirm, assert, or declare something to be true. This usage appears in pleading contexts and in ordinary legal discourse when a party "maintains" a legal theory or factual position.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To keep up; to preserve; to uphold a state or condition. Also, to declare or affirm a clause to be true; to keep in good condition and working order; to support someone in an action.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To hold or keep in any particular state or condition; to support; to sustain; to uphold; to keep up; not to suffer to fail or decline. Also, to keep possession of; to hold and defend.
The common meaning of "maintain" is broad and relatively stable — so broad, in fact, that it can mislead researchers. In legal sources, the precise meaning depends entirely on context: maintaining a lawsuit is about legal sufficiency, not physical upkeep; maintaining a structure is about preservation, not improvement. The term's ordinariness masks how much it shifts in legal instruments.
Common Confusion
Two confusions arise frequently. First, "maintain" in the sense of commencing or prosecuting a suit is sometimes read as synonymous with "file" or "bring" an action, but historical usage treats it as carrying the additional implication that a cognizable cause of action underlies the proceeding — a nuance that matters when courts assess whether a suit was properly "maintained" at all. Second, in property and regulatory contexts, "maintain" is sometimes conflated with "construct," "improve," or "operate." Anderson's dictionary specifically flags that maintaining a railroad implies no power to change the location after construction — a boundary courts have taken seriously in interpreting grants of authority.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Maintain an action: Prosecute or keep alive a legal proceeding, with the implicit assertion of legal entitlement.
Maintain a structure or condition: Keep in repair or continued existence; rebuild if destroyed; does not extend to alteration or relocation.
Maintain a nuisance: Continue or perpetuate a nuisance through ongoing conduct or inaction; distinct from creating or originating it.
Maintain a position or assertion: Affirm a factual or legal claim, particularly in pleadings or argument.
Why It Matters in Research
"Maintain" is one of the most context-sensitive verbs in legal drafting, and its instability across sources is a genuine research hazard.
In older statutes and deeds, a grant of authority "to maintain" a facility — a toll road, a dam, a railway — was often litigated on the question of whether it permitted structural alteration. Courts read "maintain" narrowly in those contexts, treating it as a preservationist obligation rather than a license to modify. Researchers working with 19th- and early 20th-century infrastructure grants, franchises, or easements should treat "maintain" as a term of limitation, not expansion.
In litigation contexts, the historical dictionary usage — "to maintain an action imports the existence of a cause of action" — is analytically significant. Courts citing this principle use it to distinguish colorable from frivolous suits, and to evaluate whether a plaintiff who "maintained" a claim had the requisite legal basis to do so. This usage appears in early Minnesota and similar common-law authorities and has filtered into procedural law discussions about standing and ripeness.
In trade secret and intellectual property contexts, "maintain" has taken on particular significance through the "reasonable measures to maintain secrecy" standard. Here the word is active and ongoing: a trade secret holder must affirmatively sustain protective measures across time. A single act of protection at disclosure is insufficient; maintenance implies continuous effort. Researchers analyzing trade secret claims should track how courts evaluate the sufficiency of ongoing maintenance conduct, not merely initial security decisions.
Corpus researchers should also note that "maintenance" as a noun carries its own independent legal history as a form of intermeddling in litigation — a meaning entirely separate from the verb uses catalogued here. Do not assume entries for "maintenance" and "maintain" are interchangeable.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries largely agree on the core verb but differ in emphasis and completeness.
Black's (1st and 2nd Ed.) focus almost exclusively on the litigation sense — "to maintain an action is to commence or institute it" — and both anchor the definition to the implied sufficiency of cause of action. The 2nd edition supplies the underlying citation explicitly (Boutiller v. The Milwaukee, 8 Minn. 105). Neither edition addresses the property or regulatory maintenance obligation at length under this entry.
Anderson's is meaningfully richer. It catalogs the preservationist sense (maintain a fence, maintain a railroad), draws the critical distinction between maintenance and location-change authority, and gestures toward the complexity of "works of maintenance" in railway law — a term it acknowledges is difficult to define. Anderson's also notes the nuisance maintenance usage, distinguishing the active prosecution of a nuisance from its original creation.
What the historical dictionaries collectively miss: the modern regulatory and intellectual property uses of "maintain," where ongoing affirmative conduct is both required and measured against an objective standard of sufficiency. These meanings were not prominent when the 19th-century dictionaries were compiled and require supplementation from modern statutory and case law sources.
Jurisdictional Note
The preservationist versus expansionary reading of "maintain" in property and franchise grants varies by jurisdiction and statutory context. Some states have codified specific maintenance obligations for fences, roads, and waterways that define the term's scope by statute, effectively displacing common-law interpretive debates. In intellectual property law, the "reasonable measures" standard under the Defend Trade Secrets Act applies federally, but state trade secret statutes (most based on the Uniform Trade Secrets Act) apply similar language with some variation in how courts assess sufficiency of maintenance conduct.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Reasonable Measures to Maintain Secrecy — The Law Mind Intellectual Property Encyclopedia (ip_90)