Definition
Poinding of the ground is a remedy in Scots law by which a creditor holding a heritable security (a real security over land) is entitled to seize and take in execution all moveable goods found on the secured subjects — that is, on the land or property over which the security extends — in satisfaction of the debt owed. The right proceeds not from a personal obligation of the debtor but from the land itself: the goods are taken because they are situated on the encumbered ground, and the creditor's right attaches to them by virtue of that connection.
The foundational principle is that the security binds the land, and anything on the land is subject to the creditor's diligence. A landlord's hypothec operates on analogous logic, and the two are closely associated in practice. The remedy is available to any creditor holding a debitum fundi — a debt secured against, or constituted as a burden on, the ground — regardless of who personally owes the underlying obligation.
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Common Confusion
Poinding of the ground should not be confused with ordinary poinding (diligence against a personal debtor's moveables following decree), which requires a personal obligation and a judgment against the debtor. Poinding of the ground is a real, not personal, diligence: it flows from the heritable security over the land, not from any decree against the individual. A researcher encountering "poinding" in older Scottish sources must determine at the outset whether the text concerns personal poinding, poinding of the ground, or the landlord's hypothec — three distinct concepts that share vocabulary and occasionally overlap in procedure.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is almost entirely confined to Scots law and to historical legal sources. Researchers will encounter it primarily in:
- Pre-20th-century Scottish conveyancing and heritable securities materials
- Treatises on Scottish diligence (enforcement law), particularly works by Bell, Erskine, and Stair
- Older Scots case reporters and institutional writers
The term will not appear in English or American common law sources in any substantive sense. Its appearance in Rapalje & Lawrence — an American dictionary — reflects the encyclopedic ambition of late 19th-century legal reference works to capture Scots and civil law terminology, not any transplantation of the doctrine into U.S. jurisdictions.
The reference to "POINTED OUT, (in a statute), 100 Mass 195" in the Rapalje & Lawrence entry is an unrelated annotation that appears to have been appended editorially to the same dictionary page and bears no doctrinal connection to poinding of the ground. Researchers should treat it as a separate entry stub, not as authority on the Scottish remedy.
The debitum fundi concept — a debt running with the land rather than with the person — is the key analytical hook. Scots law recognized several categories of heritable securities that could give rise to this form of diligence, including bonds and dispositions in security, standard securities (post-1970), and certain feudal burdens. Reform of Scots diligence law in the 20th and 21st centuries, including the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 and the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc. (Scotland) Act 2007, significantly altered the landscape within which this remedy operates, though the conceptual foundation survives in modernized form.
Researchers using historical Scottish sources should be alert to the fact that procedural rules governing the execution of this diligence changed considerably over time, and descriptions in 18th- or 19th-century institutional writers may not reflect the modern position.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define the term concisely as "poinding in Scotland, founded on heritable security, or other debitum fundi, for poinding or taking in execution all the goods on the lands over which the security extends." This is a sound, if compressed, summary. The definition correctly identifies the two key elements: the heritable security or debitum fundi as the foundation, and the geographical/proprietary scope (all goods on the secured lands) as the extent of the remedy.
The entry does not distinguish between poinding of the ground in the strict sense and the landlord's hypothec, which operates similarly but arises from the landlord-tenant relationship rather than from a security transaction. Institutional Scots writers — Bell's Commentaries and Erskine's Institute in particular — treat these as related but distinct doctrines and provide the fuller treatment that Rapalje & Lawrence's brevity omits.
No other source dictionaries in the Law Mind corpus cover this term. For substantive research, primary reliance must be placed on Scots institutional writers and Scottish case law rather than on the Anglo-American dictionary tradition.
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Jurisdictional Note
This remedy is specific to Scots law and has no counterpart in English common law or U.S. law. Researchers working in purely English or American legal contexts will not encounter this doctrine operationally. Its appearance in American legal dictionaries of the late 19th century reflects comparative and reference coverage, not jurisdictional applicability.
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