Definition
Non user (also rendered non-usus) refers to the neglect or failure to exercise a legal right, franchise, easement, or office. The concept operates in two related but distinct contexts:
1. Neglect of a franchise or public office. The failure to exercise a franchise granted by the government, or to perform the duties of a public office, constitutes non user and may expose the holder to forfeiture or loss of the right. A franchise unused is a franchise imperiled.
2. Neglect of an easement or private right. The failure to exercise a private right — most commonly an easement — over a period of time. Because certain rights are acquired through use (as by prescription), they may equally be lost or extinguished through sustained non user. The principle is symmetrical: use creates, non use destroys.
Non user is distinct from active abandonment. It refers to passive omission rather than an affirmative act of relinquishment, though courts have at various times treated prolonged non user as evidence sufficient to infer abandonment.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): No standard entry. The phrase "non-user" does not appear in general modern dictionaries as a common English term, though "non-user" in contemporary parlance typically describes a person who does not use a particular product, service, or platform.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered as a distinct term. The component words carry their ordinary senses: "non" (not) and "user" (one who uses, or the act of using).
The gap here is significant. Modern readers encountering "non-user" will almost certainly read it as a noun describing a person — someone who is not a user of something. The legal term is instead a gerund or abstract noun describing the act (or omission) of not using. It does not describe a person at all. A researcher encountering non user in a historical legal document should read it as "the failure to use" or "omission of use," not as a reference to any individual.
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Common Confusion
Non user is frequently confused with abandonment. The distinction matters: abandonment typically requires intent to relinquish a right, while non user is a factual condition of non-exercise, with intent either irrelevant or merely inferred from the duration and circumstances of disuse. In some jurisdictions and historical sources, the two concepts bleed together, and courts have used non user as evidence from which abandonment may be presumed. Researchers should check whether a source treats non user as automatically extinguishing a right or merely as evidence bearing on that question. The former is the stricter rule; the latter the more common modern approach.
Non user should also be distinguished from misuser (sometimes mis-user), which refers to wrongful exercise of a right or franchise rather than failure to exercise it. Both misuser and non user could historically ground a forfeiture proceeding, but they operate on opposite ends of the same problem: too much wrong use versus no use at all.
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Why It Matters in Research
Non user appears most frequently in historical materials dealing with easements, prescriptive rights, franchises, and public offices — areas where use is constitutive of the right itself. Researchers working in these areas should be alert to several features of the historical record:
First, the spelling is variable. Sources render the term as "non user," "non-user," "nonuser," and the Latin "non usus" interchangeably. Index and full-text searches should account for all variants.
Second, the legal weight of non user has shifted over time. In older common law sources (and as reflected in Blackstone and Kent, both cited by Burrill), non user could operate as an independent basis for forfeiture of a franchise or loss of an easement. Modern doctrine is generally more forgiving, typically requiring some showing of intent to abandon or statutory prescriptive period before rights are extinguished. A rule stated in a nineteenth-century source may not reflect current law.
Third, the term appears in two analytically separate bodies of doctrine — public law (franchises and offices) and private law (easements and property rights) — that are not always clearly distinguished in older dictionaries and treatises. Burrill's entry treats both in a single breath. Researchers should be attentive to which body of law governs their source's use of the term.
Fourth, in easement law, non user intersects with the law of prescription, abandonment, and extinguishment. A researcher tracking the life cycle of an easement will need to connect non user doctrine to those adjacent bodies of law.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary provides the foundational entry for this term, drawing on two authoritative sources: Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Com. 153) for the franchise and office context, and Kent's Commentaries (3 Kent's Com. 448) for the easement and private rights context. Both are canonical citations for this period and the cross-reference is reliable.
Burrill's formulation — "a right acquired by use may be lost by non-user" — captures the symmetry principle neatly and accurately. This is not a contested statement; it reflects settled doctrine in the sources he cites. What Burrill does not address is the evidentiary question: whether non user standing alone extinguishes the right, or whether courts require additional circumstances. That doctrinal refinement is a product of later development and would not be expected from a mid-nineteenth-century dictionary entry.
No other historical dictionary in the current Law Mind corpus provides a competing entry for comparison.
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Jurisdictional Note
The legal consequences of non user vary by jurisdiction and by the type of right at issue. In American property law, the extinguishment of an easement by non use generally requires additional evidence of abandonment intent in most states; the English common law rule treating prolonged non user as automatically defeating the right is not universally followed. Researchers working across jurisdictions or time periods should not assume that a rule stated for one system applies in another.
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