MERITORIOUS - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

MERITORIOUSAuthored

The Law Mind • 895 words

Definition

Having legal merit; possessing sufficient grounds in law or fact to warrant judicial consideration, relief, or success on the substance of a claim or defense. A meritorious argument, claim, or defense is one that goes to the substantive core of the dispute rather than resting on procedural technicality.

The term appears most frequently in two contexts:

1. Meritorious defense or claim: A defense or claim that presents a genuine legal or factual basis for relief — one that, if proven, would affect the outcome. Courts commonly require a showing of a meritorious defense before granting relief from a default judgment; the movant must demonstrate that the underlying defense has substance, not merely that procedural error occurred.

2. Meritorious cause or ground: A basis for an appeal, motion, or legal action that is not frivolous — that presents a real question of law or fact deserving resolution. Contrasted with claims brought purely for delay, harassment, or with no reasonable chance of success.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Deserving of merit or commendation; deserving reward.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Possessing merit; deserving of reward or honor; worthy of recompense; valuable.

The common meaning is moral and evaluative — something meritorious deserves praise or recognition. The legal meaning is narrower and more technical: a meritorious defense or claim is not one that is admirable, but one that has substantive legal sufficiency. A factually weak but legally cognizable defense can be meritorious in the legal sense without being praiseworthy in any ordinary sense. Researchers should not import the common meaning's moral valence into legal contexts.

Common Confusion

Meritorious is sometimes conflated with successful or well-founded. They are related but distinct. A meritorious claim clears a threshold of substantive legal viability; it need not ultimately prevail. Courts evaluating motions for relief from default do not ask whether the defense will win — only whether it presents a real legal question. Similarly, meritorious should not be confused with colorable, which suggests a superficial plausibility that may not survive scrutiny. Meritorious implies stronger substantive grounding than colorable, though neither guarantees success.

Why It Matters in Research

The term does significant work in procedural contexts that historical dictionaries largely ignore. When researching relief from default judgments, vacatur of judgments, or appeals of right, the meritorious defense standard is a threshold requirement that shapes outcomes independently of the merits of the underlying dispute. Researchers working with older cases should note that the standard for what counts as meritorious has shifted: nineteenth- and early twentieth-century courts were sometimes more formalistic, treating the existence of a legal theory as sufficient, while modern courts may require some factual showing that the defense could actually succeed at trial.

Jurisdictional variation in how courts apply the meritorious defense requirement is significant in the default judgment context — some courts demand a detailed factual showing while others are satisfied with a plausible legal theory. Researchers pulling cases across jurisdictions should treat holdings on this standard with care and not assume uniformity.

In appellate practice, the related concept of a meritorious ground for appeal intersects with ineffective assistance of counsel doctrine: attorneys have an obligation not to pursue frivolous appeals, and courts have held that failure to raise a meritorious issue can support a claim of deficient performance. This doctrinal connection means the term appears in both civil procedure and criminal law research streams.

The term also surfaces in attorney fee and sanctions contexts. A claim or defense that is not meritorious — that has no reasonable basis in law or fact — can expose a party or counsel to sanctions. Researchers tracing the history of Rule 11-style sanctions should track how courts have defined the boundary between non-meritorious and frivolous, as that line has moved over time.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical dictionary sources retrieved here — Black's 2nd Edition and Rapalje & Lawrence — do not contain a direct entry for meritorious; the retrieved text concerns merger of estates, an unrelated term. This is a retrieval artifact researchers should be aware of. The absence of a dedicated entry in these sources is itself informative: meritorious was treated as a general adjective whose legal application was understood from context rather than as a term requiring formal definition. This pattern is common for evaluative adjectives that function as legal standards — courts and treatises of the era assumed readers understood the word's common meaning and applied it without elaboration.

Later editions of Black's define meritorious defense in the procedural context and distinguish it from the general moral sense of the word, reflecting the term's increasing technical weight in twentieth-century civil procedure doctrine. Researchers relying solely on early dictionary sources will find this procedural specificity missing and should supplement with procedural treatises and case law.

Jurisdictional Note

The meritorious defense requirement in the default judgment context is broadly recognized across state and federal courts but applied with varying rigor. Federal courts applying Rule 60(b) have developed a body of doctrine on what showing suffices; many state courts follow analogous standards under their own rules, but the factual threshold differs. Researchers should not assume federal precedent controls state court analysis.

MERITORIOUSmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

other. Here the less important ceases to have an independent existence. In real-property law. It is a general principle of law that where a greater estate and a less coincide and meet in one and the same person, without any intermediate estate, the less is immediately annihilated, or, in the law phrase, is said to be merged, that is, sunk or drowned, in the greater. Thus, if there be tenant for yenrs, and the reversion in fee-simple descends to or is purchased by him, the term of years is merged in the inheritance, and shall never exist any more. 2 Bl. Comm. 177; 1 Steph. Comm. 293; 4 Kent, Comm. 99. James v. Morey, 2 Cow. (N. Y.) 300, 14 Am. Dec. 475; Duncan Vv. Smith, 31 N. J. Law, 327. Of rights. This term, as applied to rights, is equivalent to “confusio” in the Roman law, and indicates that where the quallties of debtor and creditor become united in the same individual, there arises a confusion of rights which extinguishes both qualities; whence, also, merger is often called “extinguishment.” Brown. Rights of action. In the law relating to rights of action, when a person takes or acquires a remedy or security of a higher nature, in legal estimation, than the one which he already possesses for the same right, then his remedies in respect of the minor right or security merge in those attaching to the higher one. Leake, Cont. 506; 10 C. B. 561. As where a claim is merged in the Judgment recovered upon it. In criminal law. When a man commits a great crime which includes a lesser, or commits a felony which includes a tort against a private person, the latter is merged in the former. 1 East, P. C. 411. Of corporations. A merger of corporations consist in the uniting of two or more corporations by the transfer of property of all to one of them, which continues in existence, the others being swallowed up or merged therein. In regard to the survivorship of one of the constituent corporations, it differs from a “consolidation,” wherein all the consolidating companies surrender their separate existence and become parts of a new corporation. Adams v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co., 77 Miss. 194, 24 South. 200, 60 L. R. A. 33; Vicksburg & Y. C. Tel. Co. v. Citizens’ Tel. Co., 79 Miss. 341, 30 South. 725, 89 Am. St. Rep. 656. Possessing or charac terized by “merit” in the legal sense of the word. See MERITS. —Meritorious cause of action. This description is sometimes applied to a person with whom the ground of action, or the consideration, originated or from whom it moved. For exam- TU ple, where a cause of action accrues to a woman while sole, and is sued for, after her marriage, by her husband and herself jointly, she is call the “meritorious cause of action.”— Meritorious consideration. One founded upon some moral obligation; a valuable consideration in the second degree.—Meritorious defense. See DEFENSE.

MERITORIOUSmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1883

(815) less kept alive, or unless it is to the owner's interest that it should not merge. (Wats. Comp. Eq. 621; Burt. Comp. R. P. 2 1513; Spence Eq. 346, 424, citing Gilb. Lex Præt. 264.) There is a general leaning against merger in courts of equity, except in those cases where merger is convenient and beneficial to all parties. 3. Estates at law. -At law, when a in fee-simple), the charge will merge ungreater and a less estate meet in the same person without any intermediate estate, the less estate is merged in the greater, so as to cease to exist. The greater estate is thus accelerated, but not enlarged. (3 Pres. Conv. 7. See ENLARGEMENT.) Thus, if A. is tenant for life of land, and the reversion in fee afterwards descends to, or is otherwise acquired by him, his estate for life merges in the fee, and he thus becomes tenant in fee in possession. But if a person has two estates in different rights, as where he has one in his own right, and the other in right of his wife, or as executor, there will in general be no merger. An estate for life being, in the estimation of the law, greater than any term of years, however long, it follows that when a person holding a term for one thousand years becomes entitled to the land for an estate for life, the term merges in the life estate. (2 Bl. Com. 177 and notes; Burt. Comp. R. P. 22 747, 896; 8 Jarman & B. Conv. 1, n. (a).) Merger, or its consequences, are in some instances prevented by statute. Thus, in England, an estate tail does not merge in the freehold (Stat. 13 Edw. I. c. 1 (De Donis). See as to the preservation of the rights incident to a reversionary term which has merged, 8 and 9 Vict. c. 106, 29: Wms. Real Prop. 251. See ENLARGEMENT); and now by the Judicature Act, 1873, there can be no merger, by operation of law only, of any estate the beneficial interest in which would not be deemed to be merged or extinguished in equity. (Sect. 25, § 4.) This enactment is apparently meant to recognize the rule which prevailed in equity before the act, namely, that where the estate of a trustee acci25. Crown grants. In the law relating to grants by the crown, it is the rule that when a right belonging to the crown by virtue of its prerogative (such as the right to wreck) is granted to a subject as an appendency to land, then if the land comes into the hands of the crown the right merges in the jus coronce, and does not pass by a grant of the land, but must be created again. Rights vested in the crown otherwise than jure corone (such as warrens, fairs, &c.) do not merge. (Case of the Abbot of Strata Marcella, 9 Co. 24; Heddy v. Wheelhouse, Cro. Eliz. 591; Duke of Northumberland v. Houghton, L. R. 5 Ex. 127.) As to the merger of tithes, see that title; also EXTINGUISHMENT. 26. In criminal law. The merger of a lesser in a graver offense which is necessarily included in the commission of the latter. Thus, burglary often includes larceny; battery includes assault, &c., &c. Where the two offenses are of equal degree there can be no merger. MERGER, (defined). 89 III. 170; 2 Cow. (N. Y.) 300; 5 Watts (Pa.) 456; 1 Hill (S. C.) Ch. 276. (Me.) 164. Co. Litt. (history of the doctrine). 4 Greenl. (how considered in law and equity). 338 b, n. 4. (when takes place). 15 Barb. (N. Y.) 70,75; 2 Cow. (N. Y.) 246; 3 Johns. (N. Y.) Ch. 53; 5 Id. 35; 6 Id. 393, 417; 4 Paige (N. Y.) 578, 642; 1 Sim. 298. (N. Y.) 192; 2 Plowd. 418. (when will not take place). 1 Paige (when the civil remedy is merged in the felony). 15 Mass. 78; 4 N. H. 239;1 Wheel. Am. C. L. 232.

MERITORIOUSa.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

Possessing merit; deserving of reward or honor; worthy of recompense; valuable. And meritorious shall that hand be called, Canonized, and worshiped as a saint. Shak. -- Mer`i*to"ri*ous*ly, adv.  -- Mer`i*to"ri*ous*ness, n.

meritoriousadj

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Deserving of merit or commendation; deserving reward.

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