Definition
In Roman civil law, an action brought against the master of a slave for a wrong committed by the slave. The wrong giving rise to the action — typically theft, robbery, or property damage — was called noxa. The master's liability was not absolute: upon the slave committing the wrong, the master had the option either to pay damages or to surrender the slave to the injured party in satisfaction of the claim. This surrender is known as noxal surrender (noxae deditio). The action thus attached to the wrongdoer personally, not to the relationship permanently — a principle expressed in the maxim noxa caput sequitur ("the liability follows the person"). If the slave was later freed, liability passed to the slave; if the slave died, the action extinguished.
The term is usually translated into English as noxal action.
Common Confusion
Noxalis actio is sometimes loosely grouped with actions in factum or other Roman delictual remedies. The specific distinguishing feature is the noxal surrender option: the master was not simply vicariously liable in the modern sense but faced a binary — pay or surrender. Modern vicarious liability doctrines in common law systems impose no such option and do not permit discharge by surrendering the employee. Researchers should resist reading noxalis actio through a modern respondeat superior lens; the conceptual architecture is fundamentally different.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a historical civil law term with no living common law counterpart. Researchers will encounter noxalis actio in three contexts: (1) comparative law scholarship examining the origins of master-servant liability and respondeat superior; (2) Roman law treatises and institutional texts such as Justinian's Institutes (Book 4, Title 8) and the Digest (Book 9, Title 4), which are the primary sources; and (3) legal history discussions of how liability for dependent persons evolved from Roman noxal actions through medieval civil law reception into early modern doctrines.
The critical research trap is anachronism. Because modern vicarious liability, parental liability for children's torts, and owner liability for animals all echo the structural problem noxalis actio addressed, secondary sources sometimes treat the Roman action as an ancestor of these doctrines. That connection is real but heavily mediated. The noxal action's defining mechanism — the surrender option, and the principle that liability follows the person — has no surviving procedural equivalent in common law systems.
Corpus researchers should also note that Burrill cites the Institutes, Digest, and Codex directly, giving Law Mind users a starting scaffold for primary source navigation. Black's (both editions) provides only the doctrinal summary without the institutional citations, making Burrill the more useful reference for Roman law research specifically.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition: noxalis actio is an action against a master for wrongs committed by a slave, with the wrong itself termed noxa. The definitions are substantially identical across Black's first and second editions, which likely reflects direct carryover rather than independent analysis.
Burrill adds meaningfully by citing the governing titles in the Corpus Juris Civilis — Institutes 4.8, Digest 9.4, and Codex 3.41 — and by noting Cooper's translation, giving the entry a documentary grounding the Black's entries lack. Burrill also clarifies that noxa referred to the slave who committed the wrong (or the wrong itself), a point the Black's entries handle ambiguously. This terminological precision matters when reading Roman texts directly.
What none of the historical dictionaries address: the jurisprudential principle noxa caput sequitur, the mechanics of noxal surrender, or the doctrinal distinction between noxal liability and ordinary delictual liability. Researchers relying solely on dictionary entries will need to consult institutional Roman law sources — Gaius's Institutes alongside Justinian's — for the full operative picture.
Jurisdictional Note
Noxalis actio has no operative role in any modern common law jurisdiction. It survives in modern legal discourse primarily as a civil law and comparative law reference point. Some civil law systems derived from Roman law retained noxal-adjacent concepts in attenuated form through the medieval ius commune, but the noxal surrender option itself did not survive into modern codes.