PLEGI DE RETORNO - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

PLEGI DE RETORNOAuthored

The Law Mind • 860 words

Definition

A Latin phrase meaning "pledges for the return." In the context of common law procedure, *plegi de retorno* refers to the sureties or pledges given by a plaintiff in a replevin action, binding the plaintiff to return the distrained or seized goods to the defendant if the plaintiff fails to make good the claim in court. The pledges served as a guarantee that if judgment went against the plaintiff, the specific property taken under the writ of replevin would be restored to the defendant — or that the plaintiff's sureties would answer for the value.

The phrase appears most commonly as part of the formal record in replevin proceedings, where the writ itself would recite that the plaintiff had given pledges for the return of the goods. In practice, the pledges were often nominal — formal names entered on the record rather than real persons standing surety — but the legal obligation they represented was genuine.

Common Confusion

*Plegi de retorno* is sometimes loosely conflated with the replevin bond itself, but the two are conceptually distinct. The replevin bond is a modern procedural instrument, typically a written undertaking with a fixed penalty sum, executed before a court officer or sheriff as a condition of obtaining the writ. *Plegi de retorno* is the older common law form: named pledges who undertook the obligation of return, without necessarily reducing it to a bond instrument. In historical records, finding *plegi de retorno* in the record does not confirm the existence of a formal bond in the modern sense.

Why It Matters in Research

This term appears almost exclusively in historical records — plea rolls, year books, early form books, and procedural treatises — and is essentially obsolete in modern American or English practice. Researchers encountering it will almost always be working in sources predating the nineteenth-century procedural reforms that replaced common law forms of action with code pleading.

Several navigational points are important:

First, the term is inseparable from the writ of replevin and its procedural history. Any research into *plegi de retorno* is functionally research into replevin procedure, and the two should be traced together.

Second, historical sources use variant spellings and abbreviations. Plea rolls and early printed abridgments may render the phrase as *pleg. de ret.*, *pledges de retorno*, or in anglicized shorthand. Researchers searching manuscript sources or early print should cast a wide net orthographically.

Third, the practical significance of the pledges shifted considerably over time. In the earliest common law practice, the pledges were understood as real obligors. By the later common law period — certainly by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — they had become largely fictitious entries, a formal vestige retained by the record but without substantive meaning. This collapse from substance to form mirrors what happened to other nominal parties in common law pleading (the casual ejector in ejectment, for example). Researchers should not assume that the presence of *plegi de retorno* in a record indicates real sureties were involved unless the record itself gives reason to think so.

Fourth, the shift to statutory replevin bonds in American jurisdictions during the nineteenth century means that post-reform American sources will rarely use the Latin phrase at all. When it does appear in American legal writing after the mid-1800s, it is typically in historical exposition or treatise commentary, not as a live procedural term.

Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary treats *plegi de retorno* in the context of replevin procedure, consistent with its classical common law function as the pledges given for return of distrained goods. The Bouvier entry available in the Law Mind corpus is fragmentary at the relevant passage — the excerpt provided addresses pledge and collateral security in an unrelated commercial context — but Bouvier's broader treatment of replevin confirms the standard account: the plaintiff obtaining a writ of replevin was required to give pledges that if the case went against the plaintiff, the goods would be returned.

Earlier and more expansive treatments appear in Jacob's Law Dictionary and Cunningham's Law Dictionary (eighteenth century), both of which define the term in substantially the same way, identifying it as a formal part of the replevin record. Blackstone's *Commentaries* (Book III) and Fitzherbert's *Natura Brevium* are the more authoritative common law sources for the procedural context, though neither is part of the current Law Mind shelf.

No significant divergence exists among historical dictionary sources on the core meaning. The term was stable in its definition across the common law period; what changed was not the definition but the practical reality behind it.

Jurisdictional Note

*Plegi de retorno* as a live procedural concept belongs to English common law and the American jurisdictions that received it before statutory reform. American states replaced the common law replevin form with statutory replevin actions and bonds during the nineteenth century; the Latin phrase has no operative role in any current American jurisdiction.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

Law Mind Encyclopedia: REPLEVIN

PLEGI DE RETORNOmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

personal obligation cannot constitute col- lateral security for another obligation of the same debtor, hence if he hold bonds of a corporation as collateral for its note he cannot, if the pledgor become insolvent, claim both on the notes and the bonds; 3 Wyo. 803; 67 Conn. 824. Formerly on default the pledgee had no power to realize upon his pledge, in the absence of agreement, except by securing a judicial decree; Glanv. lib. x. c. 6; 5 Bligh N. 8. 136; 2 Johns. Ch. 100; 8 Ill. 423; 3 Tex. 119; 22 Pick. 40; 2 N. Y. 443. While this might in some cases still be necessary (see 57 Minn. 341), it is now generally con- ceded that on default the pledgee may sell after demand for payment and reasonable notice to pledgor. The pledge must be sold at public auction, and if it be divisible, only enough must be sold to pay the debt. Generally an agreement is entered into when the pledge is made which provides what remedies the pledgee shall have in case of default, and the agreement of the parties will be sustained if not fraudulent or contrary to public policy; 3 Cal. 151 ; 52 Kan. 195; 49 Neb. 280. Thus the pledgor may waive notice; 183 N. Y. 660 ; or authorize the pledgee to sell at public or private sale without advertisement or notice, at his discretion; 84 Fed. Rep. 557; but the sale must be in good faith; 80 id. 665. The fact that the price realized was small will not affect the purchaser's title; 56 id. 164. But a merely colorable and pretended sale of the pledged property by the pledgee does not affect the rights of the pledgor as against one not standing in the position of a bona fide purchaser; 41 Minn. 146. The pledgee may in anticipation of default make a valid contract to sell the collateral when the default occurs; 162 Mass. 527. But a stipulation for a forfeit- ure to pledgee in case of default is void; 84 Hun 496; and a court of equity will scrutinize carefully an agreement for transfer of ownership, and set it aside if it appear to have been obtained under a harsh contract, brought about by the posi- tion of vantage occupied by the pledgee; 79 Fed. Rep. 522. In the absence of an agreement permit- ting it, the pledgee cannot buy the pledge; 84 Me. 72; 127 U. S. 532; see 81 Fed. Rep. 450; though his purchase is voidable mere- ly, at the election of the pledgor, and not void; 54 Fed. Rep. 759; 85 id. (C. C. A.) 539. But on procuring a decree of foreclosure in a proceeding in equity to which he has made the pledgor a party, he can sell, and buy in, taking an indefeasible title; 145 Ill. 168. When corporate bonds, pledged to se- cure claims against the company, are sold at public auction and bought in by the pledgee the latter is entitled to be paid the full value of the bonds, and not merely the amount for which they were pledged; 86 Fed. Rep. 975. Consult Wigmore, The Pledge Idea, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 389; Jones, Pledges; Colebrooke, Collateral Securities; Story, Bailments; Schouler, Bailments. See MORTGAGE; SALE; CHATTEL MORTGAGE ; HYPOTHECATION; LIEN.

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