PERISH

Definition

To come to an end; to cease to exist; to die. In legal usage, perish operates across several contexts: 1. Persons: A person perishes upon death. The term carries particular legal weight in succession and inheritance disputes where the sequence of death matters — when two or more persons die in a common disaster, no legal presumption arises that one perished before the other, and statutory simultaneous-death rules govern the distribution of their estates. 2. Property and goods: Property perishes when it is destroyed, lost, or rendered no longer useful for its intended purpose. Perishable property is that which is subject to speedy and natural decay. Where the relevant time frame is necessarily extended — as when goods are held pending a legal proceeding or a forced sale — courts have recognized that property may be treated as perishable if it is liable to material depreciation in value from causes other than physical decay alone. 3. Things or rights: A claim, right, or obligation may be said to perish when it is extinguished by operation of law, as through merger, release, or the running of a limitations period. What has never existed cannot be said to have perished. The concept implies prior existence and subsequent extinction.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To decay and disappear; to waste away to nothing; to die; to cause to perish. Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To be destroyed; to pass away; to become nothing; to be lost; to die; to wither; to waste away. The common and legal meanings overlap substantially in their core sense of death or destruction. The gap appears in scope: ordinary usage treats perishing as a single event (usually death or physical decay), while legal usage extends the concept to the extinction of rights and obligations, and applies precise rules about simultaneity of death and the conditions under which property qualifies as perishable for purposes of court-ordered sale or emergency disposition.

Core Elements

For property to be legally classified as perishable, courts have considered: — Nature of the goods: Whether the goods are inherently subject to physical decay in a short period, without regard to the care they receive. — Time frame of the proceeding: Where a legal proceeding or levy necessarily extends the period before disposition, courts may treat goods as perishable even if they would not ordinarily decay quickly, provided they are subject to material depreciation in value. — Commercial sense: In commercial law, perishability refers to the character of the goods themselves — items that decay in a short time by their nature — distinct from goods that merely lose market value due to price fluctuation. For persons dying in a common disaster: — No presumption of survivorship arises from the order of death being unknown. — Distribution of property is governed by applicable simultaneous-death statutes, not by inference about who perished first.

Why It Matters in Research

The legal significance of perish concentrates in three research areas, each with its own traps. Simultaneous death and succession: Historical sources treat the absence of a survivorship presumption as settled doctrine, but the rules governing distribution have changed substantially over time. Modern simultaneous-death statutes (and the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act in U.S. jurisdictions that adopted it) replace common-law uncertainty with specific presumptions and required survival periods. Researchers working with pre-twentieth-century materials will find the doctrine stated without these statutory overlays. Do not read historical dictionary entries as reflecting current statutory frameworks. Perishable property in judicial proceedings: Courts and statutes authorize expedited sale of perishable goods held under levy, attachment, or in the custody of a receiver. The definition of what qualifies as perishable is outcome-determinative in these contexts. The extension of the term to goods subject to material depreciation — not just physical decay — is an important judicial gloss documented in Webster v. Peck, 31 Conn. 495, and carried forward in Black's. Researchers should be alert to jurisdiction-specific statutes that define perishable goods for purposes of execution sales, receiverships, and maritime salvage, since these statutory definitions may be narrower or broader than the common-law formulation. Risk of loss in contracts: The question of when goods perish is directly tied to risk-of-loss rules in contract and commercial law. If goods identified to a contract perish before risk passes to the buyer, the contract may be avoided. The meaning of perish in this context tracks the property sense above but is governed by the applicable commercial code in modern practice. Historical sources use perish in its broadest sense — death, destruction, extinction — without distinguishing among these contexts. Researchers should identify which sense controls in the source they are reading before drawing analogies across subject areas.

Historical Dictionary Support

The four historical sources agree on the core definition: to come to an end, to cease to be, to die. Bouvier adds the doctrinally significant point that what has never existed cannot be said to have perished, and states explicitly that no presumption of survivorship arises when two or more persons die in a common accident. This reflects settled common-law doctrine at the time of Bouvier's writing. Black's (both editions) and Anderson's treat perishable as the more legally operative term, giving it more attention than perish itself. All three converge on the natural-decay definition as the baseline, with the Connecticut case (Webster v. Peck) cited by Black's as authority for extending the concept to material depreciation over extended time periods. Anderson's adds the commercial-law gloss — that in commerce, perishability is determined by the nature of the goods, not the care they receive — which is a useful distinction for commercial-law research. What the historical dictionaries do not address: they predate uniform commercial codes and modern simultaneous-death statutes. Their treatment of simultaneous death reflects common-law doctrine only. Their treatment of perishable goods does not anticipate the detailed statutory definitions now found in execution, receivership, and commercial-law contexts. Neither gap is signaled in the sources themselves.

Jurisdictional Note

Simultaneous-death rules vary by jurisdiction depending on whether and in what form the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act or its successor provisions have been adopted, and whether a state requires a specified survival period (commonly 120 hours) rather than mere survivorship. The definition of perishable goods for execution-sale purposes is often set by state statute and may diverge from the common-law formulation.

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